|
lainiepop
|
 |
« on: February 08, 2015, 11:40:33 AM » |
|
Colonial Beach man was longest-lived in world with donated kidney
MEDICAL FEAT COLONIAL BEACH RETIREE SET MILESTONE
BY AMY FLOWERS UMBLE/THE FREE LANCE-STARPosted 14 hours ago
Doctors thought a transplanted kidney would give Robert Phillips about two more years of life.
It gave him 54.
Phillips’ donor kidney lasted longer than any other in the world, except for those involving identical twins.
Phillips died in December at the age of 88.
His family hopes that Phillips’ kidney will now offer new hope to transplant patients and new information to doctors who perform the procedures.
In 1963, a pioneering doctor agreed to a transplant surgery to save Phillips’ life. But the prospects were grim.
Without the procedure, Phillips could die because his kidneys were failing fast.
For about a month, he used dialysis, which was awkward and time-consuming for patients at the time.
His sister Becky read a newspaper article about kidney transplants, which were rare and risky.
“It was a very new procedure at that time, and not always met with long-term success,” said Dr. Peter Ivanovich, a nephrologist with Northwestern University in Chicago. “There were many problems to overcome, there were limited anti-rejection medicines available at the time.”
Phillips had six siblings who were willing to donate a kidney, but doctors rejected each one.
Still, Phillips flew to Denver to meet Dr. Thomas Startzl, a pioneer in the field of transplants.
A prisoner in a nearby jail offered to donate his kidney to Phillips. It would have been the first time a living inmate donated an organ.
But at the last minute, doctors discovered the prisoner’s blood type wasn’t a match. Phillips was ready for surgery but there wasn’t a kidney for him.
Another sister, Ruth, traveled to Denver with him and begged Startzl to use one of her kidneys. Their blood types didn’t match either, and the odds of a successful outcome were low. When blood types match between donor and patient, the recipient’s body is less likely to reject the new organ.
“The chances were nil as we had completely different blood types and not before or since (to my knowledge) has this been successful,” Phillips wrote in a letter to a transplant society in 1972.
But he didn’t have long to live without a transplant. So Startzl decided to give it a try.
In the letter, Phillips wrote, “I feel great and would 100 times over take the transplant as opposed to the kidney machine. One is just existing, the other living.”
After the successful surgery, Phillips changed careers, then eventually retired to Colonial Beach and took care of his wife for six years before she died in 2006.
He never had trouble with his kidneys again.
“When he passed away, the amazing thing was, his heart was bad, things were bad, he was not in any pain and his kidney was still in good condition,” said Phillips’ niece, Beverly Ange, who took care of him in his final years.
That kidney will be donated to Northwestern and to the University of Pittsburgh, where Startzl was a professor emeritus.
“If they can study it and help somebody else, then that will be just amazing,” Ange said.
Phillips was a low-key man who rarely talked about his transplant, she said. But he was eager to help other prospective transplant patients, and told his story whenever doctors asked.
In 2011, Phillips traveled to Portugal to receive the Burl Osborne Pioneer Organ Replacement Hero Award from the International Federation for Artificial Organs.
During his lifetime, Phillips saw kidney transplants move from rare to relatively commonplace. About 17,000 are performed each year in the United States. These days, the success rates are very high, Ivanovich said.
Ange hopes that even after his death, Phillips’ story will serve as encouragement for others who need transplants—and those with healthy organs to donate.
Nearly 102,000 people nationwide are waiting for a kidney to be available.
“People don’t realize how important it is to donate,” she said. “You could save a life and, you never know, that person could become a doctor and save your children and your grandchildren.”
|
I Hate Dialysis Message Board
Author
