Kristin Mekeel, MD

Kristin Mekeel, MD, is a board-certified transplant surgeon at UC San Diego Health and professor in the Department of Surgery at UC San Diego Health. She specializes in liver, kidney, and pancreas transplantation surgery in adults and children. She performs operations in patients with conditions such as chronic kidney disease, chronic liver disease, liver cancer and diabetes.
Mekeel serves as chief of the Division of Transplant and Hepatobiliary Surgery where she leads a group of four surgeons performing over 250 transplants, living and deceased donor organ procurements, and other surgeries per year. She also serves as vice-chair of Quality for the Department of Surgery and program director for Surgical Quality at UC San Diego Health. In these roles, Mekeel oversees quality and safety for operating rooms and surgical subspecialties.
She is also program director of the UC San Diego Center for Transplantation. Her leadership helped the program achieve a record number of transplants with excellent outcomes in 2019. She is an advocate for health care quality and patient safety in organ transplantation and throughout the hospital.
Mekeel champions organ donation and transplantation both locally and nationally and has served nationally on the United Network of Organ Sharing Pediatric Committee and Operations and Safety committees. She is also a board member for the John Brockington Foundation, which raises money and awareness for transplantation and organ donation in San Diego.