A heart and liver transplant was performed for the first time in the Netherlands. This happened in the Groningen University Medical Center (UMCG). A 35-year-old woman received a new heart and liver from the same donor during an operation.
The double transplant took almost 24 hours. Seventeen medical specialists and more than thirty support staff members worked there, according to the UMCG. The operation was prepared for years and, according to one of the surgeons, was very complex. Not only was the woman’s heart different, but so was the way that organ was positioned in her body, making it difficult to connect the new heart correctly.
The patient is now fine. She has started rehabilitation and says the new organs have given her a “second life”. The patient has a severe congenital heart defect which has left the right side of her heart missing. She had had heart surgery several times, but the condition had also affected her liver.
The condition leads to water retention and shortness of breath. Patients generally do not live past their thirties or forties. In the Netherlands, a few hundred people have the condition, according to the UMCG.
A double transplant is much more beneficial than if a patient first gets a new heart and then a new liver. Anyone with a new heart must take medication for the rest of their life to make sure their body doesn’t reject the “foreign” organ. If the patient also needs a new liver some time later, it is very difficult to find one that exactly matches that drug. Preventive placement of a new liver is also not possible, because not so many donors are available. Only people who urgently need a new organ are eligible for a transplant.
In the transplant center in Groningen, combined transplants such as heart and lung are performed most often. The spokesperson cannot say exactly when the heart and liver transplant was performed, because then the patient and the donor’s next of kin can be traced back to each other.
