Mayo Clinic surgeons have now performed 2,000 liver transplants in Jacksonville.

It took about 11 years to reach the feat, which Mayo's marketing folks announced today on their blog. Not only is the transplant center busy -- the busiest in the Southeast over the last five years -- but it is delivering good outcomes. Its liver transplant patients have an 83 percent survival rate after three years; nationally, the average is 79 percent.

"We are proud that this vast experience has enabled us to continually evolve our practice and successfully prolong the lives of some of most seriously ill patients out there — often the ones that other transplant centers have turned away. We offer those people, in particular, a chance at life that might not otherwise be available to them," Thomas Gonwa, head of the transplantation department, said in a statement.

Florida Times Union  by Jeremy Cox, 11/23/09

Tags: liver transplants, Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, Transplant