THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS MEDICAL CENTER
Leading the Way
The primary beneficiaries of the Green Ribbon Rally are the surgery and organ donation and transplant programs at the University of Illinois Medical Center, one of the nation’s leading academic medical centers. Located on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus on Chicago’s Near West Side, the medical center includes a 491-bed hospital and 12 outpatient centers, and provides care for more than 123,000 patients a year.
The medical center’s nationally renowned physicians, who also are on the faculty of the UIC College of Medicine, are engaged in innovative, state-of-the-art biomedical research to find new cures and treatments for disease. Gastrointestinal and liver disease has been a major focus of these research efforts, and the medical center has achieved many advances in fighting these illnesses, including the following breakthroughs:
- The first description of the life cycle of the hepatitis C virus, which led to new treatments with cure rates exceeding 50 percent
- The first demonstration of the role of interferon in inhibiting viral production, which changed the treatment of the hepatitis C virus
- The first evidence that moderate amounts of alcohol consumption accelerate hepatitis C progression
- The world’s first combined liver-bowel transplant from a living donor
- The first major hepatectomy (removal of liver tissue) using robotic instrumentation in the U.S.
- The world’s first robotic surgical removal of a kidney from a living donor for transplant
These discoveries and pioneering treatments have advanced the care, treatment and understanding of liver disease significantly, helping to save lives and improve the quality of life for patients and families affected by gastrointestinal and liver disease. Just as importantly, they help form the foundation on which improved treatment of liver disease and the ultimate cure for liver cancer must be built.