Robotic Kidney Transplant: Murray's Twins to ABB

A robotic kidney transplant puts a new kidney into a patient through an incision about the width of a palm. The surgeon works from a console instead of standing over a wide open abdomen. Wisconsin had its first one this summer, and the story went out on local radio in October. This post goes back to a pair of twins in Boston in 1954, follows keyhole surgery as it changed the donor's operation first, and then looks at how robots reached the recipient. ABB does not build surgical robots, so the post also says plainly where ABB fits and what still limits the method.

A da Vinci Xi patient cart with its four instrument arms, the system family used for robotic kidney transplants today. Photo: Alvarogarciamd / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How surgeons learned to move a kidney from one body to another

The early attempts failed because the body rejected the new organ. In 1933 Yuriy Voronyi in Kherson, Ukraine, placed a kidney from a deceased donor into a patient, who died two days later. On 17 June 1950 Richard Lawler operated on Ruth Tucker in Evergreen Park, Illinois. Her donated kidney was rejected after about ten months, since no drug could yet hold back the immune system, but she lived another five years. Surgeons could already join the vessels and the ureter. What they could not yet do was stop rejection.

Richard H. Lawler, who transplanted a kidney into Ruth Tucker in Evergreen Park, Illinois, in 1950. Photo: National Library of Medicine via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The breakthrough came on 23 December 1954 at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. Joseph Murray, J. Hartwell Harrison, John Merrill and their team took a kidney from Ronald Herrick and gave it to his identical twin, Richard. Because the twins matched, there was no rejection. Murray shared the 1990 Nobel Prize in Medicine for this and later work. For the next forty years a transplant meant a long open incision for the recipient and, when the kidney came from a living donor, another long incision for the donor.

A kidney just removed from a living donor, ready to be transplanted, 2019. Photo: Rmarlin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Keyhole surgery changed the donor's side first. In 1995 Lloyd Ratner, Louis Kavoussi and colleagues at Johns Hopkins reported a laparoscopic live donor nephrectomy, removing the kidney through small ports and a 9 cm incision. Their donor went home the day after surgery. An easier recovery makes it easier for a relative to say yes to giving a kidney. The recipient's operation took longer to change. In a report published in 2002, Andras Hoznek, Clément Abbou and colleagues in Créteil, France, described using a da Vinci robot to transplant a kidney into a 26 year old man who had been on dialysis for 11 years.

Navy surgeons perform a laparoscopic operation through small ports aboard USS America, 2021. Photo: Cpl. Karis Mattingly / U.S. Navy via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Robotic kidney transplant programs in 2026

For years robotic transplant stayed rare. In January 2009 Saint Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey reported an all robotic kidney transplant through a two inch incision. In 2014 Mani Menon, Rajesh Ahlawat and colleagues, working between Detroit and the Medanta hospital in India, described a repeatable method that cools the kidney with ice slush passed in through a port. All of their first 39 patients had working kidneys at three months. Much of what hospitals now call robotic kidney transplant builds on that published technique.

A surgeon operates from the da Vinci Xi console while the 3D view is mirrored on a monitor, William Beaumont Army Medical Center, 2016. Photo: Marcy Sanchez / U.S. Army via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The latest program to start is in Milwaukee. On 2 June 2026 a team at Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin completed the state's first robotic kidney transplant, which WUWM reported on 2 October. Dr. Ty Dunn explained that a traditional transplant needs a 15 to 18 cm incision, while the robotic route needs about 6 cm. She said the hospital stay can drop from three to five days to around two, and that patients with abdominal obesity stand to benefit most. By October the team had done two more, with four surgeons sharing the work.

Staff put sterile covers on the arms of a da Vinci Xi before an operation at William Beaumont Army Medical Center, Texas, 2016. Photo: Marcy Sanchez / U.S. Army via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

ABB does not make surgical robots, and no ABB robot takes part in these operations. The surgeon drives a dedicated surgical system such as da Vinci. ABB's machines work further back in the chain. In 2019 ABB opened a healthcare research hub at the Texas Medical Center in Houston and showed a mobile YuMi concept that loads centrifuges and handles test tubes. That is the kind of lab work behind the blood typing and crossmatch tests every transplant needs. Our post on hospital lab automation covers it in more detail.

An ABB YuMi handles a pipette beside a lab technician, from ABB's material on robots for labs and hospitals. Photo: ABB

Where robotic kidney transplant goes next

Dunn's point about weight is where the method could matter most. Many patients with obesity are turned down for a standard transplant or need a much larger cut. If the robotic approach keeps showing fewer wound problems, more of them may get off dialysis. Single port systems, which work through one small opening, are now being used for living donor surgery as well. Centres still need larger studies comparing long term kidney function after robotic and open surgery before the robotic route becomes the default.

A Dialog hemodialysis machine made by B. Braun, the treatment a kidney transplant can replace. Photo: Jonas@sodratornet.se / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

On the factory side, every robotic operation uses sterile drapes, instruments and staplers that are made and packed in clean rooms. That is precise, repetitive assembly, and a compact ABB arm such as the IRB 1200, a YuMi or a GoFa CRB 15000 cobot could do it beside people, with the cell built and tested first in RobotStudio. No ABB customer project of this kind has been announced for transplant products, so read this as a possibility. The surgical robot history post explains how industrial arms and surgical systems went separate ways.

An ABB GoFa CRB 15000 cobot at one of the automated lab workstations ABB built with XtalPi in China. Photo: ABB

Cost and skill hold the method back. A surgical robot is expensive to buy and to run, and transplant teams have to learn a new way of joining blood vessels while the kidney is out of cold storage. Dunn said an operation can still take up to six hours. A program also needs enough cases for its surgeons to stay in practice, which is one reason the Milwaukee team works as a group of four. For a patient who was once refused a transplant because of weight, a 6 cm incision and a two day stay could change the answer.

An ABB YuMi handling sample tubes inside a Copan microbiology lab system. Photo: ABB

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