General Info

Niraj Desai, MD, is an adult and pediatric transplant surgeon and director of the Center for Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation at the Northwell Transplant Institute. Previously, he served as director of the kidney and pancreas transplant program at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and director of pancreas transplant at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri.Dr. Desai first found a passion for transplantation surgery while he was doing immunology research during medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. As transplant surgeons, we spend a lot of time being immunologists, fighting the immune system just enough to prevent rejection but also avoid infection. It's a fascinating field.After more than 14 years at Johns Hopkins, the opportunity to help build a program at a large health care system with an extensive patient base and geographic reach is what drew Dr. Desai to Northwell in 2024. There is so much potential here at Northwell for innovative care for the transplant recipient. We have a few notable advantages. Foremost is having so many top-notch specialists with years of full-time, real-world clinical experience all together under one roof. Our team has seen all the different things that might come up for a patient, he said. Yet for a large program with vast resources, we feel like a small, close-knit group of colleagues. I have immediate access to all the medical specialists as well as dieticians, social workers, pharmacists and administrators for evaluations, follow-up appointments and beyond. This embedded proximity and everyday communication is something the institute does really well.Frequent and open communication is not only a top priority at the institute, but also with outside partner physicians. One part of my job is doing outreach and meeting with nephrologists in person. Kidney patients see us at the Transplant Institute for about a year, but the relationship between our nephrologists and the patient's doctor continues as long as they're alive. We're in it for the long haul.