CHICAGO (AP) - A patient who suffered from a rare genetic defect is recuperating from a triple transplant that gave him a heart, liver and kidneys, all from the same donor, say doctors at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Michael Gaynor, 40, received the organs in a 17-hour operation May 21. Because of the danger of incompatibility and rejection, all three organs had to come from the same anonymous donor.
Doctors said it was only the fourth time a heart-liver-kidney transplant had been attempted, and only one of the previous recipients is still living. Gaynor is expected to be discharged from the hospital later this week, hospital officials said.
Gaynor, from the Chicago suburb of Niles, suffered from a defect called glycogen storage disease, which gradually damages the liver and other vital organs, including the heart. He got the first of three pacemakers at age 19.
The illness forced him to quit working last fall, and he spent 48 days at the hospital waiting for donor organs.
"There were livers that were good, but the heart wasn't; or the heart was good, but the liver wasn't," said Dr. Valluvan Jeevandandam, the hospital's chief of cardiac surgery.
Jeevandandam said the heart the team removed from Gaynor's chest was swollen to two-and-a-half times normal size and was no longer capable of pumping enough blood to supply the other vital organs.
