Several years ago Jim Giusti made the decision to leave his hometown of Pittsburgh and move to Memphis to be with his new wife. It was just easier, he said, for him to make the move instead of asking her to shut down her business and uproot to move to be with him.

Giusti had been having issues with his liver before he moved to Memphis. After he moved here, he found a new primary care physician and soon realized he would need a new liver. The discovery led to the forging of a relationship between Giusti and the doctors and nurses at Methodist University Transplant Institute. He said he met with the medical staff at the nationally renowned transplant institute in early July 2008. The next month he had the liver transplant.

He’s just one of the many patients who have received transplants there. And Giusti said he couldn’t be more pleased with the outcome. “The people I met at Methodist were absolutely wonderful,” he said, “all the way from the social workers to the financial people to the doctors and nurses. Everybody was just fabulous as far as I am concerned.”

Methodist University Transplant Institute recently moved into the 4,000 square foot space next to Methodist University Hospital. The program director is Dr. James Eason, who moved to Memphis from New Orleans, following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The center employs about 200 people.

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