Dr. William Bennett

Dr. William Bennett is a professor of surgery and senior transplant surgeon in the Division of Transplantation Surgery at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota — consistently ranked as America's number one hospital. With over 35 years of experience in solid organ transplantation, Dr. Bennett has performed thousands of kidney, liver, and pancreas transplants and is widely recognised as one of the United States' foremost transplant surgeons.

Mayo Clinic's transplant programme is one of the busiest and most comprehensive in North America, performing more than 500 kidney transplants, over 200 liver transplants, and a substantial number of pancreas and simultaneous pancreas-kidney (SPK) transplants annually. Dr. Bennett has contributed to building and sustaining this programme through clinical innovation, academic leadership, and fellowship training.

Dr. Bennett's clinical philosophy emphasises careful recipient selection, donor-recipient matching, and long-term immunosuppression management to maximise graft survival and quality of life. He is involved in the evaluation and listing of potential transplant candidates and works closely with hepatologists, nephrologists, and diabetologists to optimise pre-transplant patient condition. His research has contributed to protocols that improve outcomes in sensitised patients and marginal donor utilisation.

Dr. Bennett completed his undergraduate studies and medical degree (MD) at a leading U.S. research university, followed by General Surgery residency at a major academic medical centre. He completed a Transplant Surgery Fellowship at a UNOS-approved programme, followed by a PhD in Transplant Immunology. He subsequently joined the Mayo Clinic faculty and has been a staff transplant surgeon there for over two decades.

He is a Diplomate of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS), the specialty body that certifies transplant surgical competency in the United States, and holds the FACS (Fellow of the American College of Surgeons) designation. He has completed advanced training in robotic-assisted transplant surgery and living-donor hepatectomy techniques.

Dr. Bennett's primary procedural expertise is kidney transplantation — both from deceased donors and living donors. He performs standard open kidney transplant implantation as well as robotic-assisted minimally invasive kidney transplantation, which offers faster recovery and improved cosmesis for selected recipients. He coordinates living-donor evaluation and laparoscopic donor nephrectomy alongside his implantation work.

In liver transplantation, he performs orthotopic liver transplantation from deceased donors and right hepatectomy for adult living-donor liver transplant. He has experience with split liver transplantation and domino procedures. In pancreas transplantation, he performs simultaneous pancreas-kidney (SPK) transplantation for type 1 diabetics with end-stage renal disease — the procedure with the best evidence base for this patient group — as well as pancreas-after-kidney (PAK) and pancreas-alone transplant in selected cases.

Mayo Clinic has one of the most well-established international patient programmes of any hospital in the world, welcoming patients from over 140 countries annually. Dr. Bennett's transplant practice serves international patients who seek access to Mayo's organ transplant waiting list, world-class surgical expertise, and post-transplant care.

International patients must meet U.S. immigration requirements and UNOS/OPTN policies regarding non-citizen transplant listing. Mayo Clinic's International Patient Services team assists with coordination of medical records translation, insurance requirements, housing, and translation services. Video pre-consultation is available for international patients to review their transplant candidacy and discuss expectations before travelling to Rochester. All consultations and surgical care are conducted in English; interpreter services are available.

Dr. Bennett has received the American Society of Transplant Surgeons Excellence in Education Award and the Mayo Clinic Distinguished Clinician Award. He has been recognised by U.S. News and World Report's physician recognition programme and is a named faculty lecturer at multiple national transplant surgery symposia.

He has served on the UNOS/OPTN Kidney Transplantation Committee and contributed to national policy on deceased-donor allocation. He has published extensively in Transplantation, American Journal of Transplantation, and JAMA Surgery, and has been a principal investigator on NIH-funded research examining ischaemia-reperfusion injury and novel immunosuppression protocols.