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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 26, 1987)
Wednesday, August 26, 1987/The Battalion/Page 7 ssociate prof praises organ surgery advance lIDji By Christie Yeates Reporter Merry Wylie breathed a sigh of re lief after his operation. Wylie is one ofithe first people to undergo a lung transplant in the United States, says his brother, Wayne Wylie, a Texas A&M health and physical education jjHociate professor. Jjerry had culminary vibrosis, a Ege lung disease, Wayne says. ■ I “by the time it was discovered, I H J eri ^ alread y l° st his right lung I PH V and the disease was eating up his left i luhg,” Wayne says. “Several doctors U>ld Jerry he was terminal and had no more than five years to live. told my brother, ‘Well, let’s not sit around and make their diagnosis cokne true. Let’s go down kicking and let’s just see if we can find some- io excited site that FebruaI 7 2, Wayne took Jerry e to see a doctor in Houston. They lealing, ; were told that an experimental pro- emotion at I * lin was being develo P ed that intocon ! id e B ghtbe " eflt J err y- . on said 1 * n tbis P ro 8 ram doctors were ccepted in fe ing to start transplanting lungs,’’ Wavne says. At that time, there had not been any lung transplants in the United States.” ■Wayne says the doctors told them Seven out of nine lung transplants had been successful in Canada, so a ray of hope came to Jerry. ■ Organ transplantation has be come a realistic answer for many people who experience organ failure lissolveswh 5 of some kind, says Allison Treybig, nthatarta Iflniinistrative assistant at the Living Bank in Houston. J According to the American Coun- ■ on Transplantation, there are 9’,000 people waiting to receive kid neys, 5,000 people waiting to receive corneas, 300 people waiting to re lieve a heart or a liver, 75 people Waiting to receive a heart and lung combination and 50 people waiting to receive a pancreas. ■ The survival rates are reportedly high for these transplants. Statistics from the council report that recipi ents from 96 percent of the kidney transplants, 95 percent of the cornea llansplants, 80 percent to 83 percent of the heart transplants, 40 percent to 80 percent of the pancreas trans- f | | I plants and 65 percent to 70 percent TTGl Til iff the liver transplants survive at ' ilcast one year after the operation. I “Organ transplants are being per- Jt/|y formed all over the United States,” ' Treybig says. “Each state has at least ; one ma j° r transplant hospital.” ALA (ArJ-mm yy a y ne said Jerry, an oil-field I a ortnct_worker, talked with his wife and chil dren and decided to try for the lung ansplant. Because the surgery was still in ex perimental stages, it was risky, Wayne says. The surgeons could ly remove the left lung, and the left lung was the only one working for Jerry, he says. It would have been good if the doctors could re move the right lung, the one totally st to the disease, but they could was left side, he take anotfej nd-Odessa, J allala aquift:! >le site in Cull d technical (J >rth of Van 1 Paso lawn derably, bu: need we willt d, "I’m sure; x any more a are." se that we a a siting area ; gw barges in se| conspiring to /ated armed es said. Police It. 41, was int >unty grai it alleged Port Lavaca Ayce ia poHcematl on |y ta k e t i ie i e ft one because it yacek in tlieiB^ s j er to g et; i nto t h e left side i)f First Sia!f| iployeesoB 1 my was arrested: for conspfc ravated rote | nk and In r, a plan tb ect. ny y in slice of the ;t bond Mono Nowotny ar* 1 nilton. “Jerry had to opt to give up the better lung, the one sustaining life,” Wylie says. “He knew that his right lung didn’t work, so if the surgery didn’t work, he would die.” ’ Before he could be considered for a transplant, Jerry had to meet three requirements. He had to be off a cer tain medication, his heart had to and Har pass certain strength tests and he the Ca4 had to guarantee payment, Wayne says. <*: Transplantation council data says the cost of tranplants ranges from 14,000 to |7,000 for a cornea trans plant to $68,000 to $238,000 for a liver transplant. Becky Price, the referral coordi nator for the Living Bank, says Medicare reimburses patients for kidney transplants and some heart transplants. Jerry had a good insurance policy “He (Wylie’s brother, Jerry) knew that his right lung didn’t work, so if the surgery didn’t work, he would die. ” — Wayne Wylie, A&M health and physical educa tion associate professor to help cover his medical costs, but some patients are not given trans plants because they do not have the money, Wayne says. “There’s some cold-heartedness when the doctor looks at the patient and says, T’m sorry, I can’t give you a transplant because you can’t guar antee payment,’ ” he says. “It’s cold.” After Jerry met the requirements, he was put on a nationwide com puter network that searched for a donor, he says. Ama Neel, a registered nurse and assistant supervisor of organ re trieval services for the Southwest Or gan Bank in Galveston, says the com puter network can be reached by telephoning a 1-800 number. “All the people who need organ transplants in the United States are listed on the computer,” Neel says. “Each person’s age, blood type and weight is listed.” The nationwide hotline keeps doctors in touch with the nearest or- S an recovery system on a 24-hour-a- ay basis, Neel says. “When I have a donor I get on the phone and find out where in the country there is a need for that or gan,” she says. Wayne says, “We were waiting for someone who matched Jerry’s body size, body type, blood and chest cav ity that had been killed. It was a bad thought to be waiting for someone to die. “At the same time we reasoned that if someone was going to die, we couldn’t bring him back to life. If medicine knows how to use his body parts and he’s willing to donate them, let’s take them.” Although everyone can donate certain tissues, not everyone that dies can donate his vital organs. Neel says the only people who can donate their vital organs are ones who are brain dead and are on a ventilator, a breathing machine. “They are generally people who have been victims of catastrophic head injuries or motorcycle and car accidents,” she says. “People that are brain dead because of drowning, stroke, cocaine or some other drug overdoses can also be donors.” Wayne says that on March 14 doc tors told Jerry that he needed to move to Houston from his home in Breckenridge because more donors were becoming available. Jerry was on the waiting list and anticipating being the first lung transplant recipient in the United States, he says. “On two occasions we had false alarms,” Wayne says. “The doctors called us and we went to the hospital only to find that a lung didn’t come through.” On April 29 a donor, a young man killed in an automobile acci dent, was identified in Oklahoma City, he says. Once someone has died, Neel says, the doctors and nurses in the hospital must decide whether or not the deceased meets the organ donor criteria. If the person who died is ac ceptable, the next of kin makes the decision as to whether or not organs can be donated, she says. “If the decedent signed a donor card, I will give the next of kin the donor card,” Neel says. “I still let the family make the decision. The donor card is a legal document; however, it is against the Southwest Organ Bank’s policy to recover organs with out next-of-kin consent.” After the young man’s family in Oklahoma Chose to donate his or gans, a surgical team was sent to re trieve the organs, Wayne says. A sur geon and a coordinator decided which organs were in good enough condition to be taken and these or gans were removed and quickly flown by jet to Houston. “The young man that donated his lung to Jerry also donated a heart to a man in Oklahoma City that saved his life and a liver to a man in Hous ton that saved his life,” Wayne says. “The young man and his family did a lot of good.” Treybig says one of the biggest controversies surrounding organ donation is the next-of-kin disap proving of the process. “A person can sign everything he wants, but if the family says ‘no,’ un fortunately the medical profession can’t recover any of the organs,” she says. Neel says there is a big hesitancy by health care professionals to ask the grieving families if they would like to donate their loved one’s or gans. The Oklahoma hospital had staff prepared to talk to the young man’s family and they approved of the do nation. After the organs arrived in Hous ton, Jerry entered surgery at 6:30 p.m. on April 27. Jerry says, “When I went into sur gery I was afraid I wouldn’t see any one again. I was confident that I was doing the right thing, but I was sure scared.” Jerry had a long recovery period and almost died several times after the surgery, Wayne says. Jerry was in intensive care for 22 days, was op erated on a second time, and was in intensive care another six days, Wayne says. “Cyclosporin, an anti-rejection drug, was the only thing that saved Jerry’s life,” Wayne says. Treybig says the main problem with transplants is that the body will reject anything it considers foreign. Cyclosporin is designed to help counter that rejection. Neel says since its introduction three years ago, the drug has caused a tremendous increase in the num ber of successful transplants. Wayne says Jerry was the second lung transplant recepient in the United States. The first one, a man from Madisonville, beat him by 30 hours. “It’s amazing how everyone was waiting all this time and then in 30- hours time, we had the first and sec ond lung transplants,” he says. Before his brother became se riously ill, organ transplantation hardly crossed Wayne’s mind, but after Jerry’s near-death experience, Wayne says he would be willing to give his organs to help others. “It’s an eerie thought — I don’t want people cutting on me when I’m dead,” Wayne says. “When I look at it realisticly though, being a donor is one of the good things I can do. 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