- About
- Specialties & Areas of Expertise
- Locations & Patient Information
- Education & Research
- Accepted Insurance
- External Professional Relationships
Meet Dr. Barth
Rolf Barth, MD, is an expert surgeon specializing in liver, kidney and pancreas transplantation, with a focus on living donor kidney and living donor liver transplants. Dr. Barth is committed to finding innovative treatment options for liver, kidney and pancreatic disease with the goal of improving outcomes and overall quality of life for his patients. His skill, experience and unwavering dedication to enhancing care for organ transplantation allowed Dr. Barth to pioneer minimally invasive surgery for living kidney donation. He also performed the first scarless single-port laparoscopic donor nephrectomies (kidney removal), and has gone on to successfully complete this procedure over 500 times.
Dr. Barth is an avid researcher, with interests that span both clinical and basic research. His research laboratory has evaluated novel immunosuppressive therapies, immunologic tolerance and the use of genetically engineered animal organs for human transplantation (xenotransplantation). Dr. Barth also investigated transplant tolerance and pre-clinical models of composite facial and limb transplantation, toward the clinical goal of reconstructive transplantation.
His research has been published in highly respected, peer-reviewed journals, including Annals of Surgery, American Journal of Transplantation, Lancet, and many others.
Specialties
Board Certifications
- Surgery
Practicing Since
- 2004
Languages Spoken
- English
Medical Education
- Duke University School of Medicine
Residency
- Duke University Medical Center
Fellowship
- University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics; Massachusetts General Hospital
Memberships & Medical Societies
- American Society of Transplantation
- International Liver Transplantation Society
- American Society of Transplant Surgeons
- American College of Surgeons
- Transplantation Society
- Society of Clinical Surgery
News & Research
Insurance
- Aetna Better Health *see insurance page
- Aetna HMO (specialists only)
- Aetna Medicare Advantage HMO & PPO
- Aetna POS
- Aetna PPO
- BCBS Blue Precision HMO (specialists only)
- BCBS HMO (HMOI) (specialists only)
- BCBS Medicare Advantage HMO & PPO
- BCBS PPO
- Cigna HMO
- Cigna POS
- Cigna PPO
- CountyCare *see insurance page
- Humana Medicare Advantage Choice PPO
- Humana Medicare Advantage Gold Choice PFFS
- Humana Medicare Advantage Gold Plus HMO
- Medicare
- Multiplan PPO
- PHCS PPO
- United Choice Plus POS/PPO
- United Choice HMO (specialists only)
- United Options (PPO)
- United Select (HMO & EPO) (specialists only)
- United W500 Emergent Wrap
- University of Chicago Health Plan (UCHP)
Our list of accepted insurance providers is subject to change at any time. You should contact your insurance company to confirm UChicago Medicine participates in their network before scheduling your appointment. If you have questions regarding your insurance benefits at UChicago Medicine, please contact our financial counseling team at OPSFinancialCounseling@uchospitals.edu.
Some of our physicians and health professionals collaborate with external pharmaceutical, medical device, or other medical related entities to develop new treatments and products to improve clinical outcomes for patients. In some instances, the physician has ownership interests in the external entity and/or is compensated for advising or speaking about the entity’s products or treatments. These payments may include compensation for consulting and speaking engagements, equity, and/or royalties for products invented by our physicians. To assure objectivity and integrity in patient care, UChicago Medicine requires all physicians and health professionals to report their relationships and financial interests with external entities on an annual basis. This information is used to review relationships and transactions that might give rise to potential financial conflicts of interest, and when considered to be significant a management plan to mitigate any biases is created.
If you are a patient at UChicago Medicine and would like more information about your physician’s external relationships, please talk with your physician. You may also visit the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Open Payments website at https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov/ . CMS Open Payments is a national disclosure program that promotes a more transparent and accountable health care system. It houses a publicly accessible database of payments that reporting entities, including drug and medical device companies, make to covered recipients like physicians and hospitals.
Information in the CMS Open Payments database could potentially contain inaccurately reported and out of date payment information. All information is open to personal interpretation, if there are questions about the data, patients and their advocates should speak directly to their health care provider for a better understanding.
Laparoscopic Donor Nephrectomy at UChicago Medicine
Dr. Rolf Barth explains a minimally invasive kidney donor transplant surgery that leaves a small scar in the belly button.
[MUSIC PLAYING] About a decade ago, our team refined and developed a technique for really the least invasive approach towards kidney donation. We call it single-port donor nephrectomy, and take advantage of really the first scar that any of us are born with, which is our belly button. We make a small incision, hiding it in the belly button, and put a special instrument through which we insert the camera and the instruments needed to do the operation.
We spend that time for the next period of hour or two separating the kidney from the patient, carefully and meticulously dissecting the blood vessels and the kidney. And at the final step, divide those blood vessels and put the kidney into a special sterilized bag, and stretch out the belly button just large enough to bring the kidney out for the recipient.At the end of the operation, we close up the belly button. Everyone ends up with an innie. And the incision is not much bigger than your original belly button. We put a little piece of gauze and a Band-Aid over the incision.
It's actually not a full Band-Aid. We cut the Band-Aid in half. And patients go to recovery and wake up and can look down at their tummy and see half a Band-Aid over their belly button, and know that they've not only saved someone's life by donating their kidney, being able to go home with minimal pain and back to full function, and doing these wonderful acts of kidney donation.
[MUSIC PLAYING]