Doctors in Seattle are reporting a history-making case in which a patient received two donor organs, a liver and a heart, to prevent the extremely high likelihood that her body would reject a donor heart transplanted alone. In doing so, they successfully tested the concept that a donor liver can confer robust immunoprotection on a subsequent heart transplant.
The dual-organ recipient, Adriana Rodriguez, 31, of Bellingham, Washington, has recovered well since the Jan. 14, 2023, procedures, said Dr. Shin Lin, a cardiologist at the UW Medicine Heart Institute. He is the lead author of the paper describing the novel approach, newly published in The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation.
