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Show eGaty Transplants -— Their 32,000 Americans a year solutions to many on his experience and wrote a book. His operation was performed in January, 1968—just a month after the first two iransplants were performed! Much has been learned since, and there are guarded hopes for longer lasting successes. The transplant itself is actually less complicated than many other forms of open-heart surgery. The first steps of a heart-transplant op- eration are not unlike preparing a pumpkin for Halloween—except, of + course, hai it's a deadly ness, for a humanlife is literally in the surgeon’s hards. The diseased bottom three-quarters of the patient’s heart is removed, leaving the stem intact with all its connections to the major blood vessels of the body. The donor’s heart is then attached. The insertion of the new heart is generally suecessful— the organ starts beating immediately and supplies blood to the body. Then the patient is placed under intensive care. Other biological factors, however, may limit the degree of his recovery as well as the length of his survival. The surgery is well perfected, and most competent heart surgeons can perform it. But long-range successes wil! be made possible only by other specialists, such as immunologists. Surprisingly, one possibie source HERE AREpatients like Will Gray in every hospital in every city in the world. His heart was so diseased that he couldn’t speak and could barely breathe. He needed oxygen constantly and was extremely emaciated. In fact, while the doctors were preparing him for surgery, Will didn’t have enough breath to whisper. Six months, a year, nearly two years—anything which could give 6 Family Weekly, March 22, 1970 of help also may be the psychiatrist. Dr. Aaron Paley, chief of the department of psychiatry at Denver’s National Jewish Hospital, joined with two psychologists in a team which found convincing evidence that ore element in the success of heart surgery is the “personality structure” Will this much morelife, and a fairly norma)life at that—must be considered a success. And this is the have had transplantaticn, hope heart-transplantation surgery holds out to Will and many others. this year. Only a few years ago there were those whose hearts, like Will's, were highly damaged far beyond anything medi- cal science could cope with. These sufferers, with nothing to lose, welcomed the hope of a heart transplantation—in fact, only for these advanced cases is such a procedure even suggested. Amazingly, of nearly 150 such victims of heart disease who 20 sur- of the patient. The team was able to vived a year or longer. This included 18 personsstill alive on Jan. 1 of predict accurately in 24 ovi of 27 cases whetherthe patient vould survive. As they put it: “. . the pre- Whatis significant is not that the publicized Philip Blaiberg lived only slightly less than two years after a heart transplant, but that he was able to live a relatively normal existence. Seemingly doomed to a short bedridden existence, Blaiberg was able to undergo this surgery and, with some effort, become fairly active, swim, and even travel. He lectured diction equation was disturbingly accurate.” In this study, Dr. Paley and his team interviewed each patient twice before he underwent surgery. Part of these two sessions was devoted to simply talking—but specialists can learn a great deal about aa individual from this technique. In addition, psychologiczi tests were used as well as special intelligence tests. |