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Organ transplant
Patient Information
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UK Hospital Performs Heart Transplant
on Youngest Patient
LEXINGTON, KY (Nov. 5, 1999) – A University of Kentucky Hospital surgical team has performed a heart transplant on a 14-year-old Central Kentucky boy, the youngest patient ever to receive a heart transplant at UK.
The five-hour surgery was performed Nov. 1 on Joshua Johnson of Jeffersonville in Montgomery County, who had dilated cardiomyopathy.
Juan Sanchez, M.D., cardiothoracic surgeon and surgical director of the heart transplant program, and Robert Mentzer, M.D., cardiothoracic surgeon and director of the UK Transplant Center, led the surgical team. The surgery began about 7:30 a.m. and ended about noon. Upon completion of the transplant, the organ immediately began to function, and a normal heart rhythm was restored.
Johnson is in serious, but stable condition and is in the Hospital’s surgical intensive care unit. He will remain there for several days before being moved to a regular hospital room. He has been taken off a ventilator, and is able to sit up.
Johnson was diagnosed about four years ago with viral myocarditis, an infection of the heart related to a virus. The infection caused a rare condition known as dilated cardiomyopathy, which is characterized by very weak heart muscle. His heart continued to weaken over the past few years, and became twice its normal size.
Johnson’s condition deterioriated in the last six months as he failed to respond to medication, said Santosh Menon, M.D., cardiologist and medical director of the heart failure and cardiac transplant program. "It became obvious that a transplant was his only option. Without a transplant, the mortality rate is about 30 to 40 percent in a year." The teen was listed with the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) on Sept. 22, 1999.
"This is an example of the pediatric cardiologist, the adult cardiologist and the transplant surgeons working together to bring together the resources necessary to take care of a child with end-stage heart disease," Mentzer said.
"We will continue to develop our pediatric heart transplant program over the coming years as we begin to identify patients for whom transplant is the best option," Mentzer said.
UK performed its first heart transplant in March 1991. Previously, the youngest heart transplant at UK was 17.
According to UNOS, 4,317 people nationally are waiting for a heart transplant. In Kentucky, 103 people are on the waiting list for a heart transplant, and 30 of those are waiting for a heart at UK.
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