2 recent firsts mark revival of UMC's transplant team

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2 recent firsts mark revival of UMC's transplant team

By Carla McClain

Arizona Daily Star

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.30.2007

Somewhere in the Southwest in the weeks before Christmas, a small child and a grown woman died.

We don't know their names, and they didn't know each other. We don't know why or how they died — only that their deaths very likely were unexpected.

But we do know that they gave vital parts of themselves to two Arizonans who now live on after undergoing rare and complex organ transplants at University Medical Center.

The woman's heart and a kidney went to a 41-year-old father in a marathon back-to-back dual transplant surgery that took two transplant teams and 10 hours to complete.

The toddler's two tiny kidneys now sustain a 56-year-old Willcox grandfather, freeing him from years of dreaded dialysis and a shortened life.

Both surgeries were firsts for UMC. These unusual, cutting-edge transplants signal the re-birth of the hospital's multi- organ transplant program, which has suffered repeated setbacks in recent years, with only the heart-transplant team performing consistently at the top of its game for decades.

"It is very unusual for any transplant center to do more heart transplants than abdominal transplants, but that is what has been happening here for years," said Dr. Rainer Gruessner, an abdominal-transplant surgeon who also is UMC's new chief of surgery.

Since he joined UMC in July, Gruessner has been giving new life to that program — and to the patients getting kidneys, pancreases and livers.

He arrived shortly after the catastrophic exit of several of UMC's top transplant surgeons, a loss that once again plunged the struggling on-again, off-again program into a shambles.

During the past 20 years, as surgeons came and went, and controversies over patient treatment erupted, UMC has seen abdominal transplants falter repeatedly and even temporarily cease.

"I think the sense has been no one really knew what was going to happen with transplants here," Gruessner said. "But now we want Southern Arizonans — and their physicians — to know patients really can come here for these transplants and other complex surgeries."

In recent months, he has reached out to kidney, pancreas and liver specialists throughout Tucson to get that message out. After a "very rewarding" response, UMC's transplant numbers are starting to climb:

â— There have been 52 kidney transplants this year, up from about 40 last year, and aiming for 100 a year soon.

â— There were 10 referrals for liver transplants in December alone, compared with only a half-dozen liver transplants performed during all of last year.

â— Eight pancreas transplants have taken place this year, after two last year.

Along with rising numbers have come expanded types of transplants, offering more vital options to life-threatened patients.

â— Contact reporter Carla McClain at 806-7754 or at cmcclain@....

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