Justin Barr, MD, PhD, practices abdominal transplant and advanced hepatobiliary surgery at Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans. His organ transplant practice includes:

- Kidney transplants from both living and deceased donors for end-stage renal disease

- Auto-kidney transplants for rare conditions such as nutcracker snydrome

- Robotic donor nephrectomies

- Dialysis access operations such as arteriovenous fistulae and grafts

- Pancreas and combined kidney-pancreas transplants for patients suffering from diabetes

- Liver transplants – including living donor liver transplants – for causes of end-stage liver disease such as cirrhosis from hepatitis, PBC, PSC, alcoholic liver disease, and fatty liver/MASH; acute liver failure; and cancers such as hepatocellular carcinoma, cholangiocarcinoma, and colorectal liver metastases. 

These operations depend on the selfless generosity of organ donors. To learn more about registering to be a donor, where one person can save 8 lives, see LOPA’s website; to learn more about signing up to be a living donor, see Ochsner Transplant Institute’s website for both kidney and liver donation. 

Dr. Barr’s hepatobiliary practice addresses malignant and benign lesions of the liver, pancreas, and bile duct including: hepatocellular carcinoma, cholangiocarcinoma, pancreas cancer, neuroendocrine tumors, liver metastases from different malignancies as well as lesions such as adenomas and hemangiomas; bile duct injuries; and other associated pathologies as part of a multidisciplinary team that pioneers the latest technologies including robotic operations. 

Participating in the promising, ever-evolving new field of transplant oncology, Dr. Barr offers transplant operations to select patients with liver cancers, including colorectal metastases, who would otherwise be ineligible to receive surgery. 

Dr. Barr earned a PhD in history from Yale University before graduating from medical school at the University of Virginia in 2015. He completed his seven-year general surgery residency at Duke University in Durham, NC and a fellowship in abdominal organ transplant and advanced hepatopancreaticobiliary surgery at the University of Toronto in Canada. He is board-certified in general surgery, with a certificate in hepatopancreaticobiliary surgery. Dr. Barr holds leadership positions in the American College of Surgeons and American Association for the History of Medicine and is an active member of the American Association of Transplant Surgeons and American Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Association. He serves as an associate editor of Annals of Surgery – Open. 

Dr. Barr’s grant-funded research focuses on the history of medicine, specifically analyzing the intersection of war and surgery. He has lectured internationally and published widely in the field, with articles appearing in The New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Annals of Surgery, Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of the American College of Surgeons, among others. His book, Of Life and Limb: Surgical Repair of Arteries in War and Peace, 1880-1960 examines the process of how surgeries are invented, adopted, and metamorphosize through the lens of arterial repair. 

Dr. Barr’s dedication to addressing the medical and surgical needs of his patients focuses on their diagnosis, concerns, and individualized goals. As a recent ‘transplant’ himself to New Orleans, he is thrilled to make the Crescent City home and eagerly anticipates discovering all it has to offer.