A kidney transplant is a well-established, life-changing treatment for patients with kidney failure. At Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), physicians perform around 150 kidney and/or pancreas transplants each year, making it one of the largest programs in the country.
On June 2, 2026, a team at Froedtert & MCW successfully completed Wisconsin’s first robotic kidney transplant — marking a major advancement in minimally invasive transplant surgery.
Robotic vs. traditional kidney transplant
When you hear about robotic surgery, you might be imagining droids moving around the operating room — but it’s not quite like that.
Surgeons remain completely in control throughout the operation, piloting robotic instruments that make small incisions in the patient The robots' wrist-like range of motion allows for dissection without any tremors from a surgeon’s hands. They also provide up-close visibility of the operating area.
“The surgeon sits at a special console where we have 3D vision and extremely magnified views of things,” says Dr. Ty Dunn — a professor of surgery at MCW, and a part of the team who conducted the operation in June.
While a traditional transplant requires a 15 to 18-centimeter incision, robotic surgery requires only a six-centimeter incision — just enough space to insert the new kidney and connect it to the patient’s urinary system and blood vessels.
“We do that in the upper abdomen, and then we basically do the work inside the abdominal cavity,” Dunn explains. “We expose the vessels and apply small little bulldog clamps, and then we can just do a very fine vascular anastomosis without a lot of tissue manipulation.”
A less invasive operation lowers risks of inflammation, bleeding and infection. All this reduces patient recovery time — from three to five days to around two days. The risk of a rejection episode is greatly reduced too.
“If we can do the least traumatic surgery as possible, then the tissues are better preserved. There's less scar problems. There’s just less inflammation, and the kidneys work immediately. It's really amazing to see this,” Dunn says.
Patients with obesity could benefit the most
Patients with abdominal obesity stand to benefit the most from robotic transplant, Dunn explains. Many of these patients are unable to qualify for a traditional kidney transplant. Even if they do qualify, a larger incision is often required.
But Dunn says robotic transplant offers a safer option for many of these patients.
“If we have a way to safely perform a transplant for those patients, where their weight isn't a barrier, then they can also benefit being free from dialysis,” she explains. “So this is really a huge innovation that improves access for transplant patients.”
Dunn’s takeaways
Dunn and the Froedtert & MCW team have conducted robotic kidney transplants two additional times since their first run in June.
“It takes a village and a lot of eyes,” she says. “We have four surgeons that are doing this, and we do it all as a group, and we specialize in different aspects of the surgery as we're growing our learning curve just so that we can get our reps in and ... then help each other as we go and rotate.”
Even with the use of robotics, the procedure can take up to six hours — and it’s an exhausting process, Dunn says. But she’s been amazed by how the team has supported each other through all the stressful moments.
“It's fun that we care for each other at the same time we're caring for the patient — and we are really inspired by being able to do something really new and bringing that to our patients.”
Froedtert & MCW's organ donation resources can be found here. You can find additional donation resources at Donate Life or Versiti Blood Center of Wisconsin. You can listen to Ty Dunn’s full conversation with WUWM’s Audrey Nowakowski above.
