Florida Patients Awaiting Heart-Lung Transplants Will Benefit From New, National Organ Allocation Policy Effective Tomorrow
GAINESVILLE—Florida patients awaiting combined heart-lung transplantation now have a better chance of receiving organs, thanks to a new national policy that goes into effect noon Wednesday (1/20/99).
The United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS, which coordinates all organ distribution in the United States, now will register heart-lung transplant patients not only on the heart-lung waiting list but also on both individual heart and lung waiting lists.
“Being on the individual organ lists means that if one type of organ becomes available, the patient automatically is eligible to receive the other organ as well. Previously, this was not the case,” said Gary Visner, medical director of the Pediatric Lung Transplant Program at Shands Transplant Center at the University of Florida and a UF associate professor of pediatric pulmonology. “Our patients will benefit greatly from this policy.”
Approximately 60 combination heart-lung transplants are performed annually in the United States. UNOS, a private, not-for-profit corporation to which all US transplant programs belong, currently lists 257 people on its heart-lung organ waiting list. UF Surgeons at Shands Transplant Center recently performed their first successful heart-lung transplant Nov. 30 on 21-year-old Regina Redmon from Ellenton.
Redmon waited five years for organs. She was diagnosed at age 7 with restrictive cardiomyopathy, a condition in which abnormal heart muscles do not relax properly and cannot expand to accept incoming blood.
Regina flew annually to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine for care by pediatric cardiologist Jay Fricker. When Fricker relocated to Florida in 1995 as a UF professor of pediatric cardiology at Shands Children’s Hospital at UF, Regina followed him.
“I came to Shands because Dr. Fricker moved there,” said Redmon. “I was so sick, they didn’t think I’d live because a lot of people are dying waiting for organs. Organ donation is something everyone should consider. Now I feel good. I’d like to go to school and eventually have a baby.”
Redmon left Gainesville Jan. 15 following extensive post-transplant physical therapy to build up muscle lost before the transplant and from post-transplant medication.
“Regina’s done extremely well and we are pleased with her course following a complex heart-lung transplant procedure,” said Fricker, chief of pediatric cardiology. “Despite a life-threatening disease, she kept her life going. She finished high school, got married and kept working. It’s really amazing what she’s been able to do.”
Shands Transplant Center is ranked seventh nationally for solid organ transplants (by volume). The most recent statistics show that in 1997, Shands had the Southeast’s only active pediatric heart-lung transplant program and one of the Southeast’s only four active adult heart-lung transplant programs.