Transplant and Immunocompromised Infectious Diseases - Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program

Ochsner's Transplant and Immunocompromised Host Infectious Diseases program is one of the busiest and most comprehensive of its kind in the country. Our faculty provides consultative care across the full breadth of solid organ transplantation, including liver, kidney, kidney-pancreas, heart, and lung, as well as hematopoietic stem cell and cellular therapies and hematologic malignancies. As one of the nation's largest abdominal organ transplant programs by volume, fellows training here are exposed to a depth and diversity of complex immunocompromised host infections.

  • Jonathan Hand, MD, Section Head, Transplant Infectious Diseases
  • Sonya Trinh, MD, MPH, Medical Director, Oncology Infectious Diseases
  • Abigail Cocco, DO, Medical Director, Cardiothoracic Transplant Infectious Diseases
  • Divisha Sharma, MD, Transplant Infectious Diseases Attending, recently joined Ochsner after completing her Transplant Infectious Diseases fellowship at the Medical University of South Carolina
Transplant and Immunocompromised Infectious Diseases Faculty

On the inpatient consultation service and outpatient transplant ID clinic, fellows see the kind of complexity that defines transplant infectious diseases as a subspecialty learning to approach diagnosis and management of challenging clinical syndromes including:

  • Invasive and difficult-to-treat fungal infections, from aspergillosis and mucormycosis to endemic mycoses such as histoplasmosis and cryptococcosis
  • Viral infections and reactivations that require nuanced, individualized management, including CMV, EBV-related PTLD, BK virus, and adenovirus
  • Nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) infections, often diagnostically elusive and requiring prolonged, multi-drug regimens
  • Multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens that don't respond to first-line therapy

Fellows gain hands-on experience well beyond the inpatient consultation service. Training includes participation in multidisciplinary donor and candidate evaluation processes, exposure to Clinical Microbiology Rounds and ID Case Conferences. The program has hosted visiting trainees from around the world, including Portugal, Jamaica, Colombia, Peru, and Ireland-Bahrain, and Republic of Georgia. Ochsner is also one of only three institutions in the United States designated as an ESCMID Collaborative Centre, connecting our fellows and faculty to an international network of clinicians and observers in transplant infectious diseases.

Beyond clinical care, our faculty is involved with national and international transplant ID leadership. They serve in leadership roles with the regional Organ Procurement Organization, and The American Association of Tissue Banks (AATB) working at the intersection of organ donation, recovery, and infectious risk. Faculty have contributed to national clinical guideline development for transplant infectious diseases and serve on policy committees through guiding the field.

Our faculty also hold leadership and active membership roles with:

  • The American Society of Transplantation, The Transplantation Society, and the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation
  • ESCMID, IDSA, and other national and international infectious diseases societies

Faculty also serve as investigators on the HOPE in Action trial, the first multicenter study of organ transplantation between HIV-positive donors and recipients in the United States. Ochsner performed the first HOPE Act transplants in the Gulf South in 2019, placing our program at the leading edge of transplant infectious diseases research and policy in the region.