The University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview is the teaching hospital for the University of Minnesota Medical School. They provide a strong foundation and excellent research facilities for students inspired to become the next generation of physicians. They provide excellent patient focused medical care at their campus that is located on the east side of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.
Their comprehensive services include primary and emergency care along with prenatal and delivery services to thousands of women each year. Some of their specialty services include organ transplants, heart disease, and cancer treatments.
One of the world’s oldest and most successful transplant programs is located in the Transplant Center. They have been performing transplant operations and caring for transplant patients for over 45 years. Some of their specialties include: kidney, kidney/pancreas, pancreas, heart, heart/lung, lung, and intestine. They pursue the cutting-edge technology in both living-donor kidney and liver transplants.
As part of their quest to be the leading transplant facility they have the nation’s first officially approved transplant fellow program. More transplant specialists have trained at their leading academic medical center than any other in the United States.
As one of the most experienced transplant facilities, they specialize in “high-risk” patients such as older people, people with certain cancers, and people whom have already received another transplant. Their pediatric kidney care transplant program was rated in the top ten by U.S. News and World Report.
The Cardiology department is a critical part of this teaching hospital. With an award winning staff such as Gary Francis, this department will provide students with some of the best training in cardiology in this nation. Gary Francis (director of the heart failure program) was chosen by the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association as the winner of their Heart and Stroke Hero Award in the Physician Researcher category.
The University of Minnesota Medical Center is a leader in the implantation of ventricular assist devices (VADs) that are designed to assist patients that are on the edge of heart failure. Once only used as a “bridge to transplantation” for younger adults, these VADs are now being used to extend the life of the elderly and those with contraindications. For patients with heart failure, the center offers biventricular pacing and the cutting-edge research in using stem-cell therapy to repair the heart.
Heart imaging research is also being done at the newly expanded Center for Magnetic Resonance Research. The new imaging center is another example of the excellence found at the University of Minnesota. The faculty and students at the facility are currently conducting research in cardiac bioenergetics in both normal and diseased states, and 7 Tesla cardiac imaging.
A U.S. News and World Report survey ranked the University of Minnesota Medical Center within its top 50 hospitals for their quality of cancer treatment. Cancer is the number one cause of death for the people of Minnesota, so this important area is under heavy research. New research is finding that oral cancer may be detected early by studying the proteins found in saliva.
Students are used heavily in this process from collecting samples to processing data. This is truly ground breaking work with a massive amount of data, so a team of computer scientists are developing software to handle, correlate, and analyze it. The researchers hope to be able to use the lessons learned and apply them to both breast and prostate cancer as well. The research at the new imaging center is not just focused issues dealing with the heart, but many other fields as well. The school is using the extreme high resolution MRI and MRS systems in research for non-invasive methods of detection of breast cancer.
