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Dr. William Goggins, Indiana University Health
No matter how many kidney transplants Indiana University Health transplant surgeon William Goggins performs—and he’s now done more than 3,000—he remains enthusiastic about his work.
“I wouldn’t say there’s any sort of routine or mundane kidney transplant, and there are some that are definitely a lot more challenging than others,” Goggins said. “But for me, every transplant has a nuance, so it always keeps me engaged and stimulated, and it’s just something I like to do.”
But if you asked him 3,000 surgeries ago whether he wanted kidney transplants to become his specialty, he probably would have said no.
Goggins grew up in Massachusetts and earned his medical degree from St. Louis University School of Medicine. He completed his internship and residency at Medical College of Virginia at Virginia Commonwealth University, and he completed a clinical fellowship in transplantation at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
In medical school, he expected to become a primary-care physician but found he enjoyed surgery more than “straight medicine.”
“As I went through my surgical training, I developed the interest in transplant after being exposed to it more,” he said. “It was probably halfway through my surgical training that I decided to really focus on transplant. When I did a transplant and surgical rotation, and I had an opportunity to see a living donor transplant, I thought it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Goggins was trained in transplanting all organs. Early in his career, he participated in liver and pancreas transplants. When he was recruited to Indiana in 2003 to run the kidney program at what was then Clarian Health, he still thought he’d transplant all organs.
“But it’s kind of funny,” he said. “As the [kidney transplant] program grew, and the stuff that I brought with me from Boston—desensitization and using older donors and expanding both our recipients and donors—I just became much more involved in the kidneys. … I love the physiology. I love the patients. I love the immunology. I love the complexity of the patient and taking care of the problems.”
Last May, Goggins became the first surgeon in the country to perform a kidney transplant with warm normothermic preservation. This groundbreaking technique uses a machine to preserve kidneys before transplantation, which decreases the discard rate of kidneys and offers a more advanced alternative to traditional static cold storage, allowing more opportunities for patients to be transplanted and have successful outcomes.
“The trust patients and their families place in him to help not only improve their quality of lives, but ultimately save their lives, does not go unnoticed,” IU Health said in nominating Goggins for the Career Achievement award. “Dr. Goggins continues to innovate and lead efforts aimed at improving kidney transplantation.”
In his leisure time, Goggins, 59, likes to watch Netflix (“The Lincoln Lawyer” is a recent favorite) and spend time with his wife, Laurie, a staff attorney for the Indianapolis Legal Aid Society, and his adult children: daughter, Kaitlyn Edwards, and sons Bill, Michael and Joseph.
In 2018, when Goggins performed his 2,000th kidney transplant, the headline on an Indianapolis Star story about that milestone said that “if surgeons kept stats, he’d be LeBron James.” Goggins said he’ll happily accept that comparison. Or maybe Michael Jordan.
“To be able to be compared to either Michael Jordan or LeBron James is just embarrassing,” he said. “I mean, it’s just so flattering.”
But since he grew up in Massachusetts, did his fellowship training at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and has lived in Indiana more than 20 years, would a more appropriate comparison be Larry Bird?
“You know,” he said, “if you call me that, that’s what I would take. One hundred percent.”•
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