A Baylor milestone: Combined heart/lung-heart "domino" transplant

• Published in: Proceedings - Baylor University. Medical Center Vol. 31; no. 1; pp. 123 - 125
• Main Author: Alivizatos, Peter A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Taylor & Francis 2018; Taylor & Francis Group LLC; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Forecasts and trends; Heart surgery; history of medicine; Medical research; Organ transplantation; Thoracic surgery; Transplantation; Transplants & implants; Transplantation; history of medicine
• ISSN: 0899-8280; 1525-3252
• DOI: 10.1080/08998280.2017.1391037

Alivizatos presents a case of a Combined heart/lung-heart "domino" transplant. Tom Lee lived with his wife in Garland, a suburb of Dallas, and in spite of the dyspnea that forced him to use oxygen around the clock, he worked as a manager in a printing house. He had been diagnosed with the rare absence of an enzyme that was insidiously but steadily destroying his lungs and would lead to his death. Up to the 1980s there was no cure for the pulmonary emphysema he was suffering from, or for many other lung diseases. This changed with the first combined heart/lung transplant at Stanford in 1961. The experimental work for this procedure started 10 years earlier (1961) by the same pioneers, Richard Lower and Norman Shumway, who developed the technique for heart transplantation.