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In This Issue:
BWH Helps Provide an Early Christmas Gift to Three Families
BWH was able to simultaneously deliver on three large requests this holiday season…two lungs and a heart. Surgical teams at BWH performed a triple organ transplant from a single donor on the morning of Monday, December 23, giving the gift of life to Guy Newton, John O’Brien and Cliff Guiles.
The triple transplant was highlighted during a press conference held in Carrie Hall on Christmas Eve, where physicians and some of the more than 50-person medical staff involved in each of the three procedures joined family members of the organ recipients.
“It is amazing to know that although the family of this donor is now coping with the loss of their loved one, they have been able to recognize the opportunity to give the gift of life to another person, or in this case, three people.” said Raphael Bueno, MD, the lead surgeon who performed Guy Newton’s left lung transplant.
Guy Newton, 64, of Berkley, MA, had been waiting for more than three years when he got the call that a lung was available that Sunday evening.
“We’ve known in order for my husband to get a lung, it would be at the sacrifice of somebody else,” said Joanne Newton during the press conference. “We understand the pain that one family is going through right now, but on the other hand, this gift is the most precious gift anyone could have asked for.”
Bonnie Guiles, wife of Cliff Guiles, echoed Newton’s sentiments as she told reporters, “I would like the thank the donor’s family for all they did--giving my husband a heart and his life back.”
Bulletin had the opportunity to speak with Cliff Guiles just last month after his BWH patient care team made it possible for him to attend a Patriots football game (BWH Bulletin, Dec. 6, 2002). The 52-year-old upstate New Yorker had been awaiting a heart transplant for a year and a half due to congestive heart failure.
“I think the highlight of this was that we did essentially provide a Christmas gift to each of these patients,” said Gregory Couper, MD, Guiles’ cardiac surgeon.
Sixty-one-year-old John O’Brien of Quincy, MA, received a right lung after 14 months of waiting. During the press conference, his wife Julie explained that O’Brien had promised their granddaughter that they would go horseback riding once he obtained his new lung.
Julie O’Brien told reporters, “The first thing our granddaughter said when she heard that John was going to get his lung was ‘now we can go riding,’ and John intends to do just that.”
This transplant was made possible thanks to the intricate coordination of multiple resources driven by a dedicated staff of surgeons, anesthesiologists, perfusionists, nurses, respiratory therapists and many other staff members. Along with orchestrating simultaneous procedures in the OR, beds in the surgical ICUs had to be quickly coordinated to accommodate the post-surgical care of the three recovering organ recipients.
In addition to Couper and Bueno, surgeons Yolanda Colson, MD; Michael Jaklitsch, MD; and Phillip Linden, MD were pivotal in performing the successful surgeries, along with Barbara DiTullio, RN; Carol Miller, RN; Debra Martinez, surgical technician; Phillip Hartigan, MD; and Aaron Deykin, MD.