UPMC Hamot hires first Erie-based kidney transplant surgeon
Dr. Stalin Dharmayan went right to work Nov. 1, his first day as surgical director of UPMC Hamot’s kidney transplant program. He replaced a patient’s diseased kidney with a healthy one.
His real welcome to Erie came four weeks later, though, when the Black Friday winter storm dumped nearly three feet of snow at Hamot and across northern Erie County.
Dharmayan was unable to open his front or side door due to the amount of snow. A neighbor finally helped him shovel a way out of his own house.
“I got a ride to work for a couple of days from Hamot security so I could see my patients, and I stayed across the street at a bayfront hotel for a few nights,” Dharmayan said.
Nasty weather hasn’t dimmed Dharmayan’s enthusiasm at becoming Hamot’s first Erie-based kidney transplant surgeon. The hospital’s previous 117 transplants since the program started in 2015 were all performed by UPMC surgeons who traveled from Pittsburgh to Erie.
UPMC’s decision to base a transplant surgeon at Hamot was made for several reasons, said Brian Durniok, Hamot president.
“It provides better access for patients to have a provider full time in the region,” Durniok said. “These patient are typically ill and this reduces the need for them to travel down to Pittsburgh for office visits. … Having a surgeon based in Erie also will help us increase our number of transplants performed at Hamot.”
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Surgeon’s goal is to double Hamot’s transplants in 3-5 years
About 25 transplants are performed each year at Hamot. Dharmayan said the program’s goal is to double that number over the next three to five years.
In order to accomplish that goal, more transplants currently performed in Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Cleveland would have to be done at Hamot, the only Erie hospital that offers kidney transplants.
Hamot plans to host outreach clinics with Dharmayan in the region to educate people about the transplant program and increase its number of transplant performed.
“There are about one million people living in this region, so I think we could double our volume pretty easily,” Dharmayan said.
“There is a gap in available services between Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Cleveland,” Durniok said. “We have a lot of people in that service area who wish to remain closer to home. Now we have a qualified surgeon based here who wanted to return to western Pennsylvania.”
Dharmayan worked in England before moving to Erie
Dharmayan, 50, served a multi-organ transplant fellowship at UPMC Presbyterian in Pittsburgh after graduating from medical school in Chennai, India, and serving an initial fellowship in Leicester, England.
He spent the last four years working as a transplant and vascular access surgeon at University Hospitals in Leicester before moving to Erie.
“When I’m not performing transplants, I’ll be doing other surgeries including some that help patients who need dialysis,” Dharmayan said. “Currently, those are performed here in Erie by cardiothoracic surgeons but I am trained to do those.”
Though Dharmayan will be based at Hamot, other UPMC transplant surgeons will continue to travel to Erie, Durniok said.
When there is a living kidney donor, three surgeons are needed to remove the donor kidney and attach it in the recipient. Sixty-five of Hamot’s 117 transplants have used living donors.
“There are two of us in the donor surgery and another with the recipient,” Dharmayan said. “Once we have the kidney, I join the surgeon with the recipient as soon as I prepare the kidney for transplant.”
Contact David Bruce at [email protected]. Follow him on X @ETNBruce.
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