KTTC
by Linda Ha

Several hundred people are celebrating the gift of life in Rochester Sunday at Mayo Clinic's transplant patient and donor family picnic. Transplant recipients, living donors, and families of deceased donors from across the United States traveled to Soldiers Memorial Field for the annual event. Attendees enjoyed food, music, games, camaraderie, and shared their stories. "It's just such a wonderful thing to see people after seeing them when they were on the brink of death or feeling so awful, and then to see them later when they're back and enjoying life and seeing all the things that they're supposed to be doing," said Dr. Charles Rosen, director of Mayo Clinic's Transplant Center.

Reach:  KTTC-TV Channel 10 is the Rochester, Minnesota-based NBC affiliate.  Its website has more than 160,00 unique visitors each month.

Additional coverage:
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Post-Bulletin, Transplant recipients celebrate a second chance

Context: Mayo Clinic is the largest integrated transplant provider in the United States. Mayo Clinic's campuses in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota include more than 150 surgeons and physicians and hundreds of allied health staff who are trained in caring for transplant patients. Mayo doctors performed their first clinical transplant in 1963. Since then, Mayo's efforts to continually improve and expand organ transplantation have placed Mayo at the leading edge of clinical and basic transplant research worldwide.

Contacts: Ginger Plumbo, Heather Carlson

Tags: Dr. Charles Rosen, Dr. Julie Heimbach, transplants, Uncategorized