More are beating the odds of heart transplant
Heart transplants have come a long way in 40 years. Recipients aren’t only living longer; they’re thriving.By: John Lundy, Duluth News Tribune
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Dennis Trump observed his 20th anniversary on Feb. 20.
Beth Bartlett’s 16th anniversary came the same month.
It’s a milestone few will reach: Trump of Normanna Township and Bartlett of Duluth are long-term heart transplant survivors. It was a milestone they weren’t told to expect.
“Originally I was told five years (to live),” said Trump, whose family has grown from two young children then to three children and three grandchildren now. “I never expected to see (my children) graduate from high school, let alone have grandchildren.”
Bartlett, whose son, Paul, was 4 at the time of her transplant, had similar expectations.
“They just didn’t know much beyond five years,” Bartlett said. “They really didn’t keep tallies of anything beyond five years. That’s kind of what I was anticipating.”
The Christmas before, when a scheduled transplant was called off because the donor heart wasn’t considered strong enough, a transplant coordinator told Bartlett they wanted to make sure her heart was good enough to see her son graduate from college. That might have seemed unrealistic at the time. But Paul is set to graduate May 16 from the College of Wooster in Ohio.
Heart transplants have come a long way since Dr. Christian Barnard of South Africa performed the first one on Dec. 3, 1967. His patient, Lewis Washkansky, lived 18 days beyond the operation.
Today’s transplant recipients not only survive longer, they often thrive, said Dr. Peter Eckman, 36, a cardiologist at the University of Minnesota Fairview Hospital heart transplant unit who grew up in Duluth and graduated from Duluth Central High School in 1992.
“One of the gifts of a heart transplant is that it gives people an opportunity to get back to their lives as they wanted,” Eckman said. “We have patients that climb mountains; there are patients that run marathons.”
Still, patients who survive beyond 15 years are beating the odds. The data show that 30 percent of patients are alive 15 years after a heart transplant, and 20 percent after 20 years, Eckman said. “We’re still impressed with people that are 20-year survivors, but it has become more common.”
Bartlett said all of the people she knew who received heart transplants around the same time she did have died. Her survival puzzles her. “I don’t know what it is,” she said. “Is it just good fortune? That I just have a really good match?”
So Trump and Bartlett have something remarkable in common. Yet their stories are remarkably different.
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information or to register in either Minnesota or Wisconsin. Mailing address: LifeSource, 2550 University Ave. W., Suite 315 S., St. Paul, MN 55114; toll-free phone number: (888) 5.DONATE.
SOURCES: University of Minnesota Medical Center, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, LifeSource
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