News & Events: Ryutaro Hirose, M.D.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Ryutaro Hirose has been named the inaugural Vice Chair of Clinical Operations and Value in the Department of Surgery. In his new role, Dr. Hirose will foster excellence and integration of our clinical practices within the UCSF Health System and its partners, and he will work together with surgical leaders at ZSFGH and the SFVA for clinical program development. He will promote efficient, cost effective, and accessible patient care, working to maximize revenues and ensure that faculty and staff have the systems and support they need to do their jobs [...]

The Organ Procurement Transplantation Network (OPTN) recently updated the liver distribution policy to provide better efficiency and fairness for transplant patients – regardless where they live, what hospital they choose for care or how sick they must be before being likely to get a transplant – and a UC San Francisco transplant surgeon was instrumental in its development. UCSF Health transplant surgeon Ryutaro Hirose, M.D. was former chair of the OPTN Liver and Intestinal Organ Transplantation Committee, which formulated the new policy that adjusts how geography is considered when [...]

UCSF transplant surgeon Ryutaro Hirose, M.D. has been appointed Surgical Medical Director of the  Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR). Below is the official announcement: The Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) is pleased to announce the addition of Dr. Ryutaro (Ryo) Hirose as Surgical Director of the SRTR. Dr. Hirose serves as Professor of Clinical Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and will continue in that role while lending his vast expertise to SRTR. In this new role, Dr. Hirose will provide general surgical expertise to all [...]

ABC News San Francisco (KGO) reports on the case of a Utah man, recovering from a lung transplant in Pennsylvania after a Utah hospital refused to put him on their transplant list because of past marijuana use. (The man subsequently died after the airing of the KGO story.) UCSF transplant surgeon, Ryutaro Hirose, M.D., was interviewed by KGO and regarding the policy on this is issue at UCSF. "We've recently liberalized our criteria regarding marijuana," said Dr. Ryutaro Hirose who is a transplant surgeon at UCSF, the country's busiest transplant center. Unlike the hospital in Utah, UCSF [...]

UCSF News reports on a just published study in the The New England Journal of Medicine in which mild hypothermia in deceased organ donors was found to significantly reduce delayed graft function in kidney transplant recipients compared with normal body temperature. The lead author of the study is Claus Niemann, MD, Professor of Anesthesia and Surgery at UCSF, and co-Director of the Ischemic Organ Injury Lab. The findings in the study could lead to an increase in the availability of kidneys for transplant. Mild hypothermia in deceased organ donors significantly reduces delayed graft [...]

Alfonso Garcia and his parents pose with the UCSF medical team that cared for him during his 2010 life-saving liver transplant. From left: mother Marta Garcia; Emily Perito, MD; nurse practitioner Susan Diaz, MSN; Garcia; Philip Rosenthal, MD; and father Oscar Garcia. Alfonso Garcia still carries around a baseball cap that belonged to a 22-year-old man who passed away in 2010 having never met him. But the cap is just a small token of an even bigger reminder that the 18-year-old college freshman carries with him every day: the man's liver, which saved Garcia's life. Since receiving [...]

UCSF News reports on the award of a $2 million grant by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to a team led by Claus Niemann, MD, Associate Professor in the UCSF Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care and co-Director of the Ischemic Organ Injury Lab to improve outcomes in organ donor transplantation.  The grant was awarded to Niemann and his collaborators including John Feiner, MD, as well as Ryutaro Hirose, MD, and John Roberts, MD, chief of the UCSF Transplant Service. Also collaborating on the project are the California Transplant Donor Network and Darren [...]

"Previously, Uruguay had tried to go it alone, but high mortality rates soon caused doctors to shut the program down. After their initial visit, the UCSF transplant team, including anesthesiologist Claus U. Niemann, MD (pictured first), and surgeons Ryutaro Hirose, MD (pictured second), and Peter Stock, MD, PhD, (pictured third) continued to consult with the team in Uruguay, guiding them through everything from patient selection procedures to the use of immunosuppressive medications following surgery. When it came time for Uruguayan doctors to conduct their first liver transplant [...]