Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta reached a historic milestone with its 2,000th pediatric solid organ transplant, underscoring more than four decades of life-saving care for children throughout Georgia and the Southeast.

Two-year-old John Miller became Children’s 2,000th solid organ transplant recipient on June 3 when he received a kidney transplant. Diagnosed in utero with hydronephrosis, a condition that can obstruct the urinary tract and lead to chronic kidney disease, John’s journey with Children’s began when he was just 1 month old and was airlifted to the hospital in stage five kidney failure. Dr. Bhargava Mullapudi, Division Chief of Abdominal Transplant Surgery and Surgical Director of Pediatric Abdominal Transplant, and Dr. Richard Hendrickson, pediatric transplant surgeon, performed John’s transplant in collaboration with Dr. Rouba Garro, John’s nephrologist and Medical Director of the kidney transplant program at Children’s.

Since performing its first solid organ transplant in 1980, Children’s has built one of the nation’s leading pediatric transplant programs, bringing together highly specialized surgeons, physicians, nurses and multidisciplinary care teams to treat children with complex heart, liver and kidney disease. In 2025 alone, Children’s teams performed 57 solid organ transplants. Earlier this year, surgeons performed the system’s first dual heart and liver transplant at Arthur M. Blank Hospital.