This program will provide a comprehensive update on Intestinal Rehabilitation and Transplantation at UPMC. Intestinal transplantation continues to evolve as an effective therapy for patients with irreversible intestinal failure associated with life-threatening parenteral nutrition (PN) complications. Intestinal rehabilitation and transplantation offers hope of increased longevity and improved quality of life to patients with intestinal failure and life-threatening complications of chronic PN.

At the conclusion of this presentation, learners will be able to identify suitable candidates for intestinal rehabilitation and/or transplantation; correlate indications to types of grafts involving the intestine; discuss current immunosuppression.

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Dr. Kareem Abu-Elmagd is professor of surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and director of the Intestinal Rehabilitation and Transplantation Center at the UPMC Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute. He leads a program that has performed more than 450 intestine transplants since May 1990 – the largest experience of any center in the world.

Dr. Abu-Elmagd is widely recognized for developing and standardizing many of the surgical techniques and post-transplant management methods that have made transplants of the intestine alone or in combination with the liver and other organs both feasible and increasingly more successful.

In 1999, during a personal appeal to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Dr. Abu-Elmagd demonstrated that research and clinical advances were contributing to improved survival rates and that programs should receive reimbursement. CMS’ decision to cover intestine, liver-intestine and multivisceral transplants at centers of excellence was based in large part on the Starzl Institute’s vast clinical experience and the team’s published body of research conducted over more than a decade under Dr. Abu-Elmagd’s leadership.

In addition to his clinical and surgical expertise in the field of liver transplantation, Dr. Abu-Elmagd has also made significant worldwide contributions in the field of portal hypertensive surgery. He played a major role in the development and introduction of the immunosuppressive drug FK506, currently known as Prograf.

Dr. Abu-Elmagd received his medical degree from the Mansoura University School of Medicine in Mansoura, Egypt, in 1976, and completed his internship there in 1978. Between 1978 and 1982, he completed two surgical residencies: at Hurghada General Hospital in Hurghada, Egypt, and at Mansoura University Hospital. During this time, he also was studying for a master’s degree in surgery, which he received in 1981 from Mansoura University. Following his residencies, Dr. Abu-Elmagd completed a research fellowship in immunology at Wayne State University in Detroit and a two-year clinical research fellowship at Emory University in Atlanta. In 1987, he earned a doctorate in surgery awarded jointly by Mansoura and Emory universities.

Already an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Mansoura, Dr. Abu-Elmagd arrived at the University of Pittsburgh in 1989 to complete a clinical fellowship in transplantation surgery. Still maintaining his academic ties at Mansoura, he joined the University of Pittsburgh faculty in 1990 as an assistant professor of surgery. Despite already being an accomplished surgeon, between 1995 and 1997, Dr. Abu-Elmagd took a leave of absence to complete a surgical residency at UPMC in order to be certified by the American Board of Surgery. Upon completion of the residency, he rejoined the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh as an associate professor of surgery and in 2001 he was promoted to professor of surgery.

Dr. Abu-Elmagd’s research interests include immune modulation of the intestinal graft, induction therapies for intestinal and multivisceral transplantation and recurrence of primary biliary cirrhosis, primary sclerosing cholangitis and autoimmune hepatitis after liver transplantation. He is widely published and has 31 book chapters to his credit. He is a frequent presenter at major scientific congresses and has given more than 100 invited lectures.

Memberships in societies include the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, the International Liver Transplantation Society, the American Medical Association, the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, the American Society of Transplantation, the Transplantation Society and the American Surgical Society. More recently, he was invited to join the prestigious American Surgical Association, an honor usually reserved for surgeons who significantly contributed to the recent advancements in the surgical art and science He also is an active participant in local activities for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America.