UM surgeon to lead transplants at Cleveland Clinic

Andreas Tzakis, a celebrated transplant surgeon at the University of Miami, is moving to Cleveland Clinic in Weston to help establish a transplant program there—the first of perhaps a series of moves that will intensify South Florida hospital competition in the crucial, heavily publicized field. Cleveland Clinic is in the final stages of getting approval from state regulators for its transplant program—a regulatory road that the Memorial Regional and Broward Health Medical Center have also started down in direct challenges to the Miami Transplant Center, a joint UM-Jackson Memorial operation which for decades has dominated the field of adult transplants in the region. Tzakis said two other UM transplant surgeons have left this year, and he hopes that eventually he might be able to lure UM colleagues to Cleveland.