CHICAGO, IL - July 23, 2026 – For Preeyanuch Chanwongwanit, a busy mom of four from New Berlin, Wisconsin, life came to a screeching halt in 2019 when she was diagnosed with renal failure. After school activities with her children were quickly replaced by a demanding dialysis schedule, as the family awaited a life-saving kidney transplant. But when two transplant surgeries at another health system failed, the 46-year-old was faced with yet another daunting diagnosis – an allergy to general anesthesia.

“This is one of the most bizarre stories I’ve ever heard,” said Vinayak Rohan, MD, a transplant surgeon at Northwestern Medicine. “This patient had two previous attempts at kidney transplantation at another health system but went into cardiac arrest on the table before the surgeries could even start.”

The discovery of Chanwongwanit’s allergy by her care team in Wisconsin meant a third attempt at a kidney transplant would be complicated, as she could not undergo general anesthesia. Out of options, her care team reached out to Northwestern Medicine’s AWAKE Program (Accelerated Surgery Without General Anesthesia in Kidney Transplantation), which offers select patients a chance to remain awake through their kidney transplant.

Instead of using general anesthesia, a spinal anesthesia shot is given to the patient, similar to what’s used during a cesarean section for childbirth. It involves injecting a local anesthetic into spinal fluid and numbing the lower half of the body while allowing the patient to remain conscious.

“The AWAKE Program was built for patients like Preeyanuch. When her medical team in Wisconsin called us, they said, ‘we know Northwestern Medicine is the only place that can help her,’” said Satish Nadig, MD, PhD, transplant surgeon and director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Transplant Center. “To date, we’ve performed 25 kidney transplant procedures where the patient is fully awake, and Preeyanuch is our first patient from Wisconsin. The AWAKE Program represents our commitment to continuously reimagine what is possible in transplant care. We’re incredibly proud to offer this innovation and deeply grateful for the opportunity to help patients like Preeyanuch.”

Redefining what is possible for patient care

After her two unsuccessful transplant attempts at another health system, Chanwongwanit was running low on hope. But after meeting Dr. Rohan and his team at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chanwongwanit’s husband, Arthur Lee, said everything changed.

“Dr. Rohan explained to us how the surgery would work, and we immediately felt more comfortable knowing general anesthesia wasn’t part of the plan,” said Lee. “As a husband and father, you want to see your loved one happy and healthy, and the AWAKE Program gave us confidence from day one. What could have been another stressful experience turned into one filled with reassurance.”

On May 25, Chanwongwanit received a kidney from a deceased donor at Northwestern Memorial, and despite giving birth to four children, Chanwongwanit had her first experience with an epidural.

“All four of my deliveries were natural births, so this was my first time having an epidural,” said Chanwongwanit. “I was completely alert on the operating room table, went through the transplant without any complications, didn’t experience any pain, and went home 36 hours after surgery. I felt supported by my care team every step of the way and would highly recommend the AWAKE Program to other patients.”

“At Northwestern Medicine, we’re always looking for new ways to make transplantation safer, more accessible and less burdensome for patients. Through our AWAKE Program, we’re helping people experience a smoother recovery while delivering the same world-class transplant care,” said Dr. Rohan. “Our team is honored to be part of these extraordinary journeys and to help patients achieve the best possible outcomes as they begin a new chapter in their lives.”

Back to being mom

Two months after the transplant, Chanwongwanit’s new kidney is functioning as it should, allowing her to get back to the things that matter most. The children’s music and sport schedules have begun to replace dialysis, allowing the family to finally begin their long-awaited fresh start.

“Instead of living life from the sidelines, I can now be there for my four children every day – celebrating milestones and making memories. I also miss my parents who live in Thailand, so I’d love to visit them soon,” said Chanwongwanit. “I’m so grateful to my organ donor and the incredible team at Northwestern Medicine for giving me a second chance at life. With my new kidney, anything is possible.”

About the AWAKE Program

Northwestern Medicine surgeons performed the first AWAKE kidney transplant in June 2024, and to date, 25 patients have received kidney transplants without general anesthesia.

The program is designed to give patients who are not candidates for general anesthesia an alternative for undergoing the surgical procedure, while also decreasing the length of their hospital stay (one day compared to 4-7 days with general anesthesia).

For more information on the AWAKE Program at Northwestern Medicine, visit nm.org.

“Age is just a number,” said Mohammed Javeed Ansari, MD, a nephrologist at Northwestern Medicine. “What we’re looking at is the functional status of the recipient. If someone is living their life at 87, just like a 67-year-old would, they deserve the opportunity to receive a life-saving transplant.”

Doctor Ansari presented Perry’s case to his colleagues at the Northwestern Medicine Organ Transplant Center and fiercely advocated for her treatment. Perry was accepted, and on March 6, Vinayak Rohan, MD, a transplant surgeon at Northwestern Medicine, performed her surgery. 

“When Sheila was presented to the committee, everybody was taken aback a little bit,” said Dr. Rohan. “It's not every day that we see an 87-year-old looking for a transplant. But after reviewing her health history and seeing how fit she was, we were confident we could do this successfully.”

Transplants in an aging population

By 2050, the number of people over 80 years old is expected to triple. Advancements in healthcare mean people are living longer, and the number of older adults is growing worldwide. As the population ages, Dr. Rohan expects organ transplants in older patients will become more common. 

“Surgery and immunosuppression are harder on the body of an older patient, so we’ll have to adapt,” said Dr. Rohan. “We can adjust immunosuppression, cut surgery times, and perform awake kidney transplants without the risks of general anesthesia. There are things we can do to achieve good outcomes and meet the needs of this population.”

The proportion of older donors is also increasing, which may improve wait times for older recipients.  

“Even donors in their 70’s are being considered,” said Dr. Ansari. “From a biologic perspective and a physical perspective, age should not be a contraindication for transplantation.”

Thriving at 87

Just three months after surgery, Perry is back to her normal life. She lives alone by choice, walks several miles each day, and spends most of her time immersed in the arts. Whether it’s the ballet, symphony, or browsing museums, Perry is thankful her new kidney is getting her back to what she loves. As soon as she’s cleared by her doctors, Perry plans to continue her passion of traveling the world. 

“This transplant was an opportunity to add a few more years to my life,” said Perry. “I was going to have to do more dialysis, and we know where that eventually leads. Although there were risks involved at 87 years old, I’m so glad I went through with it. I’m not done living my life yet.”

After making history with a kidney transplant at her age, Perry has a message for older patients in her shoes. 

“Find an advocate who will believe in you,” said Perry. “If it can save your life, you are worthy of someone else’s kidney, even if you’re in your 80’s. Just go for it.” 

For more information on kidney transplantation at Northwestern Medicine, visit nm.org.

CHICAGO, IL – September 2, 2025 – Jessica Lopez doesn’t remember being able to see. The 32-year-old from Chicago, Ill., spent most of her childhood in a hospital, battling leukemia and retinoblastoma that would leave her completely blind. Although years of chemotherapy would help treat the cancers, it would lead to other health problems later in life.  

In November 2023, Lopez was engaged to be married when she found out she needed a new heart and a new liver. She was in heart failure from cardiomyopathy, a type of heart disease affecting the heart muscle, and the impact had spread to her liver. Lopez was listed for a double-organ transplant at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and spent one year on the waiting list. During that time, her condition began affecting a third organ. Lopez no longer needed just a heart and liver – she also needed a new kidney.  

Despite being considered high-risk for the procedure, Lopez says she was never scared. 

“I’ve always been a very positive person, and I don’t like to ever think negatively,” said Lopez. “I was confident from the very beginning that my doctors at Northwestern Medicine were going to do this successfully.”

Finding the right match

Triple-organ transplants are incredibly rare, with only 59 transplants of the heart, liver, and kidney recorded in the U.S. to date. Specialized teams with the Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute (BCVI) and the Northwestern Medicine Organ Transplant Center had performed a successful triple transplant in the past and were ready to take on Lopez’s case.  

“From the day I met her in clinic, I knew we were going to pull out all the stops to do what we needed to do to get her feeling better,” said Benjamin Bryner, MD, a cardiac surgeon at Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. “She has an attitude that’s really positive, she’s endearing, and has a great sense of humor. Just walking out of the clinic room, I thought, ‘this is going to be tricky, but we absolutely have to do this.’”

Wait times for triple-organ transplants are often longer than those for single-organ transplants since all three organs must come from the same donor. This can complicate the organ approval process, as sometimes two out of three organs may match but not the third. 

“When you have multiple failing organs, along with a patient who is young and has heart damage due to chemotherapy as opposed to the usual heart disease, it gets a lot more complicated,” said Dr. Bryner. “It’s unusual to find a recipient who can safely get through this complex of an operation.”

On February 24, three organs became available, and Lopez went in for her transplant. Lopez’s heart and liver were transplanted together before a different group of surgeons could move on to the kidney. 

“We transplanted the heart and liver in one block to limit the amount of time the organs go without blood or oxygen,” said Juan Carlos Caicedo, MD, transplant surgeon and surgical director of the Liver Transplant Program at Northwestern Medicine. “The heart and the liver stay connected the whole time from the donor to the recipient. While Dr. Bryner was doing the heart transplant, we were sewing the liver graft. You have two surgeons working simultaneously and that’s one of the advantages of our team.” 

Looking to the future

Lopez is now thriving with her new heart, liver, and kidney, and has been in remission from cancer for 20 years. 

“I feel like I was reborn again,” said Lopez. “I have more energy, my heart beats much stronger and my hands are even warmer. I’m incredibly grateful for my organ donor and their family. Because of their selfless decision, I’ve been given a second chance at life and can start planning for my future.”

Despite being blind with multiple medical challenges, Lopez never tells herself there’s something she can’t do.

“If I have to go somewhere I use landmarks when traveling on my own,” said Lopez. “My phone has accessibility to access rideshare and social media apps. When cooking for myself I use my hands to locate items on the stove. I cook things like rice, seafood, and spaghetti. It’s just about setting my mind to it.”

After recovering from surgery, she plans to attend Loyola University Chicago to study criminal investigation. She hopes to pursue a career in forensics and dreams of one day collecting evidence at crime scenes. 

Lopez and her fiancé, Christopher, are now planning a wedding in California and hope to tie the knot in 2026.  

Cancer’s toll on the heart

An estimated 18 million cancer survivors are currently in the United States and the number is expected to increase to nearly 22 million by 2030. Unfortunately, the same treatments that have improved outcomes for treating cancer can also damage the heart. 

According to the National Cancer Institute, adult survivors of childhood cancers are 10 times more likely to develop coronary disease and 15 times more likely to develop heart failure than their siblings. Treatment-related cardiovascular side effects – known as cardiotoxicities – are also common among survivors of adult cancers.

“When you think about life being unfair, Jessica was dealt a really difficult hand,” said Jonathan Rich, MD, a heart failure and heart transplantation cardiologist at Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. “As an infant, Jessica was diagnosed with cancer and found a way to be a cancer survivor. But in her case, the treatment she needed to become a cancer survivor likely led to her developing heart failure. It feels really unfair. Unfortunately, we do see this and in her in case I think that’s exactly what happened.” 

The Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute offer a collaborative Cardio-Oncology Program. The program provides seamless care between cardiology and oncology services for patients affected by cancer. 

To learn more about heart failure and transplant options, visit nm.org.

Chicago, IL – August 5, 2025 – For 28-year-old Dean Comstock of Syracuse, New York, music has always played an important role in his life. When he started playing guitar at the age of nine, one of his favorite songs was “Sweet Home Chicago,” but little did he know, 19 years later, that song would hold a whole new meaning.

In October 2023, Dean developed a cough that wouldn’t go away. At first, his doctors thought it was pneumonia or acid reflux, but on August 8, 2024, Dean was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. As an active community member who worked three jobs and didn’t have a history of smoking, Dean was shocked. He started chemotherapy, but his breathing got worse, and he soon had to rely on supplemental oxygen. Dean’s cancer was terminal, and he was quickly running out of options.  

That’s when his mom, Jill Comstock, who happened to receive a lung transplant in 2021 for pulmonary fibrosis at another hospital, asked her medical team if a lung transplant could be a possibility for him at their site. Her doctors told the family only one health system in the United States was known to perform lung transplants on patients with terminal lung cancer, and Dean would need to travel to Northwestern Medicine in Chicago to participate in a clinical trial known as DREAM, where select patients with advanced lung cancers receive double-lung transplants.

This March, Dean arrived at Northwestern Memorial Hospital where he underwent a transplant evaluation and met with Ankit Bharat, MD, chief of thoracic surgery and director of the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute.

By May 8, Dean was listed for a double-lung transplant and eight days later, he received his new lungs on May 16.

Making beautiful music together

One month later, on June 27, Dean celebrated his five-year wedding anniversary with his wife, McKayla Comstock, who is a music teacher at Jordan-Elbridge High School in Jordan, New York. In fact, the two first met in the same music room where McKayla now teaches, and they often play music together at weddings and special events.

Two months after his transplant, Dean and McKayla played for an audience in Chicago they’ll never forget – Dr. Bharat and members of the lung transplant team who helped save Dean’s life. Dean strummed his guitar in a clinic exam room as McKayla sang the lyrics to “Sweet Home Chicago.”

“The song has always been one of my favorite songs to play, and I really never knew why since I’m from Syracuse, New York, but now that a team of surgeons, doctors and nurses in Chicago saved my life, the city and the song will always hold a special place in my heart,” said Dean. “This is where miracles happen; right here at Northwestern Medicine.”  

Dean will remain in Chicago for one-year post-transplant so he can be near his medical team, and he’s looking forward to the future.

“I’m so thankful to be able to breathe fresh air every day. I’m thankful for my donor, my community, my family and everyone who has helped me along the way. I’m going to smell the roses a little bit more and enjoy life. Once you go through something like this, you learn how precious life really is,” said Dean.

Lung cancer cases on the rise in young people

Cancers of the lung are the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States with more people dying of lung cancer than colon, breast and prostate cancers combined, and doctors have noticed a startling new trend.

“On a daily basis, we’re seeing more young people being diagnosed with lung cancer,” said Dr. Bharat. “Conventionally, lung cancer has been associated with smoking and older age. While smoking certainly increases your chances of developing lung cancer, we’re seeing an explosion of lung cancer cases in patients who have never smoked or had limited smoking exposure – like Dean.”

The Canning Thoracic Institute has launched a universal lung cancer screening program where patients who meet certain criteria can get screened for lung cancer, even if their insurance doesn’t provide financial support. The goal is to share the findings with the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force and urge them to let all patients beyond a certain age receive an annual lung cancer screening.

“If lung cancer is causing the most deaths in this country, impacting smokers and nonsmokers, we need a universal screening program just like we have for breast and colon cancer,” added Dr. Bharat.

About the DREAM Program

To date, Northwestern Medicine surgeons have performed more than 50 lung transplants for patients with advanced lung cancers.

Using lessons learned from pioneering COVID-19 lung transplantation in the U.S., they developed the novel surgical technique to clear the cancer during surgery while minimizing the risk of spread that has plagued prior such attempts at other hospitals.

“We’re very proud of the DREAM Program. This innovative technique involves putting the patient on full heart and lung bypass, delicately taking both cancer-ridden lungs out at the same time along with the lymph nodes, washing the airways and the chest cavity to clear the cancer, and then putting new lungs in,” said Dr. Bharat. “These patients can have billions of cancer cells in the lungs, so we must be extremely meticulous to not let a single cell spill into the patient’s chest cavity or blood stream. We believe this technique can help reduce the risk of recurrence, which we learned through our experience with pioneering COVID-19 lung transplants in 2020.”

Since Northwestern Medicine’s Lung Transplant Program first started in 2014, they’ve performed more than 600 lung transplant procedures for patients with end-stage lung diseases such as COVID, lung cancer, cystic fibrosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and more. In 2024, Northwestern Medicine had the shortest wait time for a lung transplant in the U.S. with a median wait time of four days. They also performed 148 lung transplants, the most performed at any transplant center in the U.S. for 2024.

Patients interested in being evaluated for a lung transplant can contact the 24-hour referral line at 312.695.5864 or 844.639.5864. For more information about the Lung Transplant Program or lung cancer screenings, visit nm.org. 

CHICAGO – June 15, 2025 – Fifteen years ago, Andrew Wagner received a life-saving liver transplant. A relatively common autoimmune disease known as primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) had damaged the bile ducts in his liver, causing it to fail.

After six weeks in a medically induced coma, Wagner received his new liver at a Florida hospital in October 2010. Despite facing major blood loss, post-surgical complications and multiple follow-up surgeries, he went on to work as a recruitment manager at a local blood bank in Orlando, where he shared his personal story of how organ and blood donation had saved his life. However, in 2022, a routine abdominal and chest CT scan revealed new cause for concern: stage 1 lung cancer.

“I was completely shocked. I had no symptoms at all and this was found incidentally,” said Wagner, a 55-year-old non-smoker from Winter Garden, Florida. “Little did I know that even with a positive outcome, this cancer diagnosis was going to lead to one of the biggest roadblocks of my life.”

A year after surgeons in Florida removed his cancerous lung nodule and declared him cancer-free, Wagner began experiencing a build-up of fluid around his lungs. To his surprise, the symptom wasn’t his cancer returning – his transplanted liver was starting to fail.  

“When you get cancer after a transplant, you’re really between a rock and a hard place,” said Satish Nadig, MD, PhD, transplant surgeon and director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Transplant Center. “When Andrew was diagnosed with lung cancer in Florida, some of his anti-rejection medications likely had to be reduced to give his immune system a chance to fight the disease, which may have contributed to rejection of his transplanted liver.”

The search for a second opinion

As Wagner’s condition worsened, his wife, Nicole Wagner, sprang into action. In the spring of 2024, she reached out to transplant centers across the country hoping that someone would agree to a second transplant. However, because Wagner had not been cancer-free for three to five years, they were told repeatedly that a retransplant wasn’t an option.

While searching for answers online, Wagner’s wife came across the story of Gary Gibbon, MD – a California physician who traveled to Northwestern Medicine to receive the first double-lung and liver transplant for advanced lung cancer in the U.S.

Since Dr. Gibbon had been transplanted with active lung cancer, the Wagners figured the transplant team at Northwestern Medicine might be willing to take on Wagner’s case. In October 2024, the couple traveled to Chicago to get Wagner evaluated for a second liver transplant at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. There, they received the ‘yes’ they had been searching for.

“Andrew was really on the brink when he first got to Chicago. He likely had months to live,” said Northwestern Medicine hepatologist Andres Duarte-Rojo, MD. “After presenting his case to our multidisciplinary selection committee, we determined that even with immunosuppression, the risk of his lung cancer relapsing was very low. Though we knew the surgery would be difficult, as retransplants tend to be, we were excited to offer him this critical chance for survival.”

On Dec. 16, 2024, surgeons at Northwestern Medicine began the complex process of retransplanting Wagner’s liver. Previous surgeries left him with a significant amount of scar tissue, making his old liver difficult to remove. To minimize blood loss during the extraction, surgeons placed Wagner on bypass to ensure he’d have adequate blood flow to his heart. While surgeons removed his old liver, his new liver was kept functioning outside the body in a device called “liver in a box,” which pumps warm, oxygenated blood through the organ to keep it healthy.

“Having access to this wide range of techniques allowed us to navigate Andrew’s transplant effectively,” said Northwestern Medicine transplant surgeon Zachary Dietch, MD. “It was an interesting blend of old and new – traditional methods like bypass used alongside the latest advancements in transplant such as ‘liver in a box.’”

A father heads home

Five months after surgery, Wagner’s new liver is functioning well and he remains cancer-free. Since returning home to Winter Garden, he has been focused on staying active with walking, weightlifting, swimming and biking around his neighborhood. He is looking forward to spending Father’s Day with his blended family including his wife and two biological daughters, Estella Wagner (16) and Ava Wagner (19), two step-daughters, Riley Swartz (20) and Taylor Castillo (23) and the family’s newest addition, granddaughter Isla Castillo, who was born in April 2025.

“This particular Father’s Day will be so incredibly joyous,” said Wagner. “Receiving the greatest gift of life from the most generous organ donor has given me the opportunity to witness all the future milestones in our daughters’ and granddaughter’s lives. Thanks to my donor and my incredible transplant team at Northwestern Medicine, I still get to be a dad and grandfather.”

“Andrew not only connected with me as a daddy, but as a daughter-daddy,” said Dr. Nadig. “A few days after his transplant, I was talking to Nicole about a trip to Disney World my wife and I had planned for our daughter’s eighth birthday. Living close to the theme park, the Wagners were able to gift me with ‘Mickey ears’ for us to surprise her with. It’s families like that who remind you why you got into medicine in the first place, and why we are willing to take on the most complicated cases at Northwestern Medicine.”

Advancements in transplant oncology

Northwestern Medicine is one of the few known health systems in the country focused on redefining the criteria for transplant eligibility, especially for patients with lung or colorectal cancer. To date, the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute has performed more than 50 lung transplants for patients with advanced lung cancers through a first-of-it’s-kind clinical program called DREAM (Double Lung Transplant Registry Aimed for Lung-Limited Malignancies).

In March 2025, the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Transplant Center launched a clinical program called CLEAR (Colorectal Metastasis to Liver Extraction with Auxiliary Transplant and Delayed Resection) to expand liver transplant access for patients with stage 4 colorectal cancer.

“It’s a very exciting time for the field of transplantation,” said Dr. Nadig. “What we’ve learned in the past is not necessarily what we’re taking with us into the future. I think it’s time to re-examine what we think we know about the indications for transplant, and become more inclusive of those who have recently faced or who are facing cancer. Northwestern Medicine should not be a stop along a patient’s journey – it should the destination.”

For more information about Northwestern Medicine’s transplant programs, visit nm.org.

CHICAGO – May 11, 2025 – Eight months after giving birth to twins, Cornelia Tischmacher of Berlin, Germany, had a case of pneumonia that wouldn’t go away. The then 40-year-old went to the doctor in January 2018, where tests showed she had stage 3 lung cancer. As a nonsmoker who was healthy, worked out and had a busy career as an art historian and gallerist, Tischmacher was shocked by the diagnosis.

“I absolutely loved my job and had to travel quite a bit for work, but when I was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, my priorities immediately shifted. I knew I had to do everything I could to stay alive for my children,” said Tischmacher. “My twins would never hear me say the words, ‘Mommy is going to die.’”

In June 2018, Tischmacher underwent surgery and chemotherapy to get rid of the cancer, but by October 2019, it returned. Doctors told her palliative care with chemotherapy and immunotherapy was the only option to possibly slow down the cancer’s relentless progression.  

By June 2024, she could no longer breathe without supplemental oxygen and that’s when Tischmacher discovered a first-of-its-kind clinical program at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago called DREAM (Double Lung Transplant Registry Aimed for Lung-Limited Malignancies), where select patients with advanced lung cancers confined to the lungs can be considered for a double-lung transplant. Currently, Northwestern Medicine is one of the only known health systems in the world with a dedicated lung transplant program for patients with advanced cancers limited to the lungs. 

“During our first telehealth visit with Cornelia, it was clear to us that she was at the end of the road,” said Ankit Bharat, MD, chief of thoracic surgery and director of the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute who performed Tischmacher’s transplant. “Cornelia had failed every other medical treatment available to her, including surgeries, chemotherapy and immunotherapy, but the cancer continued to progress to stage 4 and became so advanced that it was causing her lungs to fail. She couldn’t breathe, and a lung transplant was her only option to fix the lung failure, remove all the cancer cells from her body, and give her a fighting chance to be there for her twins.”

Leaving her life in Berlin for a second chance at life

After being accepted to the DREAM Program, Tischmacher boarded an air ambulance and flew from Berlin to Chicago in December 2024. She was admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and placed on the transplant waiting list on Christmas Eve. Two days after being listed, Tischmacher received new lungs on December 26, which was the second day of Christmas in Germany.

“With how quickly her disease was progressing, it was clear to us that Cornelia would not be able to leave the hospital without receiving a lung transplant. She was requiring up to 60 liters of oxygen per minute through her nasal cannulae, which is the absolute limit you can supply without a ventilator. For that very reason, we worked around the clock to complete her lung transplant workup and arrange all the logistics needed for her to stay in the United States,” said Krishnan Warrior, MD, a lung transplant pulmonologist at the Canning Thoracic Institute who has been caring for Tischmacher since her arrival.

“Receiving my lung transplant on December 26 was the best Christmas present I could have asked for,” said Tischmacher. “I remember waking up and thinking for the first time in a long time, I will be able to go to museums and go for bike rides with my kids without bringing an oxygen tank with me. I could finally breathe again. It was such a gift that I don’t take for granted, and I encourage everyone (who is able) to register as an organ donor – not just in the United States, but also in Germany.”

Reuniting with her 8-year-old twins

Tischmacher spent one week recovering at Northwestern Memorial before being discharged to an apartment in Chicago. The 48-year-old will remain in the city for one-year post-transplant to be near her medical team. The most difficult part is being far away from her husband, Udo Kittelmann, and their 8-year-old twins, Leo and Lucie, who remain in Berlin to continue their schooling. The twins were able to visit their mom for the first time since December, when they were reunited in Chicago in mid-April for spring break.

“Seeing my children for the first time in four months was absolutely wonderful. The weight of my illness had weighed them down, and to see me healthy again was overwhelming – but in a good way,” said Tischmacher. “It’s a happy continuation of the story because it could have been so different. When we said our initial ‘goodbyes’ in December, it was much more dramatic because we didn’t know how things would go.”

Tischmacher currently has no signs of cancer in her body and is now able to walk around Chicago, touring the local art galleries, breathing on her own. She was the first patient from Germany to receive a lung transplant at Northwestern Medicine. In the past, patients have also traveled from Asia, Brazil, Colombia, Canada, the Middle East and other parts of Europe for a lung transplant. The team at Northwestern Medicine International Health welcomes patients from around the globe who seek advanced treatment for a variety of medical conditions.   

“Medicine is evolving rapidly, but unfortunately, the way medicine is practiced globally, not all treatments are available at all sites right away,” said Dr. Bharat. “Often when a center develops something new, it takes years for it to be available across the country or internationally. It’s very important for patients to find a second opinion and take matters into their own hands when they’re being told there are no other options.”

Lung cancer cases on the rise in young women

Cancers of the lung are the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States with more people dying of lung cancer than colon, breast and prostate cancers combined, and doctors have noticed a startling new trend.

“On a daily basis, we’re seeing more young women being diagnosed with lung cancer,” said Dr. Bharat. “Conventionally, lung cancer has been associated with smoking and older age. While smoking certainly increases your chances of developing lung cancer, we’re seeing an explosion of lung cancer cases in patients who have never smoked or had limited smoking exposure – like Cornelia. The majority of them are young, and the majority are women, and we still aren’t sure why this is happening.”

The Canning Thoracic Institute has started several research programs to try and understand why more women are being diagnosed with lung cancer. They also launched a universal lung cancer screening program where patients who meet certain criteria can get screened for lung cancer, even if their insurance doesn’t provide financial support. The goal is to share the findings with the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force and urge them to let all patients beyond a certain age receive an annual lung cancer screening.

“If lung cancer is causing the most deaths in this country, impacting smokers and nonsmokers, we need a universal screening program just like we have for breast and colon cancer,” added Dr. Bharat.

About the DREAM Program

To date, Northwestern Medicine surgeons have performed more than 50 lung transplants for patients with advanced lung cancers.

Using lessons learned from pioneering COVID-19 lung transplantation in the U.S., they developed the novel surgical technique to clear the cancer during surgery while minimizing the risk of spread that has plagued prior such attempts at other hospitals.

“We’re very proud of the DREAM Program. This innovative technique involves putting the patient on full heart and lung bypass, delicately taking both cancer-ridden lungs out at the same time along with the lymph nodes, washing the airways and the chest cavity to clear the cancer, and then putting new lungs in,” said Dr. Bharat. “These patients can have billions of cancer cells in the lungs, so we must be extremely meticulous to not let a single cell spill into the patient’s chest cavity or blood stream. We believe this technique can help reduce the risk of recurrence, which we learned through our experience with pioneering COVID-19 lung transplants in 2020.”

Since Northwestern Medicine’s Lung Transplant Program first started in 2014, they’ve performed more than 600 lung transplant procedures for patients with end-stage lung diseases such as COVID, lung cancer, cystic fibrosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and more. In 2024, Northwestern Medicine had the shortest wait time for a lung transplant in the U.S. with a median wait time of four days. They also performed 148 lung transplants, the most performed at any transplant center in the U.S. for 2024.

Patients interested in being evaluated for a lung transplant can contact the 24-hour referral line at 312.695.5864 or 844.639.5864. For more information about the Lung Transplant Program or lung cancer screenings, visit nm.org. 

CHICAGO – March 18, 2025 – The scarcity of donor organs and disadvantages within the allocation system can create a difficult pathway to transplant for patients with stage 4 colorectal cancer whose disease has spread to the liver. For the first time at Northwestern Medicine, surgeons have successfully split a deceased donor liver into two parts, transplanting one portion into the intended recipient and the other, smaller segment, into a patient with terminal colorectal cancer who could not find a suitable living donor. The treatment option is now available for select patients with advanced colorectal cancer with liver metastasis in a new clinical program at Northwestern Medicine called Colorectal Metastasis to Liver Extraction with Auxiliary Transplant and Delayed Resection (CLEAR).

“The CLEAR program is exciting and unique because it serves an unmet need in a particular patient population,” said Satish Nadig, MD, PhD, transplant surgeon and director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Transplant Center. “Because liver transplantation for colorectal cancer is not done at many centers around the country, the current organ allocation system does not prioritize these patients, and they end up falling lower on the waitlist. As a result, patients with colorectal cancer with liver metastasis often rely on living donors. Unfortunately, not everyone is walking around with a living donor. For many of these patients, the only alternative is palliative treatment, which we refuse to accept.” 

In the fall of 2024, after failing to find a living liver donor to treat his stage 4 colorectal cancer, 53-year-old Barclay Missen of Chicago became the first patient at Northwestern Medicine to receive a liver transplant via a surgical technique known as resection and partial liver transplantation with delayed total hepatectomy (RAPID). The two-stage procedure is for patients with cancer who might not survive the wait for a traditional transplant.

First, surgeons remove a graft from a deceased donor liver that is allocated to a patient higher on the transplant waitlist. The larger portion is transplanted in the initially designated recipient, while the smaller portion is transplanted into the patient with cancer, who has half of their cancerous liver removed simultaneously. Weeks later, once the small piece has grown in size, the remaining cancerous liver is removed.

Four months after receiving his new liver via the RAPID technique, Missen has no signs of cancer in his body and doesn’t require any further cancer therapy.

“We are excited to offer RAPID as an option through the CLEAR program,” said Northwestern Medicine transplant surgeon Zachary Dietch, MD. “The entire goal of the program is to make it easier for patients with advanced colorectal cancer to get a liver transplant. We know that transplant is a lifesaving option for these patients, especially if the cancer is otherwise confined to the liver. Without it, five-year survival with chemotherapy is just 10%, but that survival can reach 80% with a liver transplant."

A surprising diagnosis 

Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer in both men and women worldwide, and the liver is the most common site of spread, with up to 60% of colorectal cancer patients developing liver metastasis. 

In Dec. 2021, Missen was experiencing some minor abdominal discomfort when he came to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for a colonoscopy following his fiftieth birthday. To his surprise, doctors found a large tumor in his colon and diagnosed him with stage 4 colorectal cancer — the disease had spread to his liver.

Missen’s medical team was able to slow the progression of the disease with chemotherapy, a colon resection, and liver ablations, but it was only a matter of time before the cancer grew resistant to treatment. By April 2024, the disease had severely damaged his liver and he learned he would need a transplant. Though friends and family volunteered as donors, none were a suitable match for Missen. The husband and father of two was facing few options for survival when his Northwestern Medicine transplant team approached him with their innovative solution. 

“When I learned that RAPID was an option for me, I was elated,” said Missen. “To go from having little hope to learning that I could become the beneficiary of so much skill, so much bravery, and so much generosity was unbelievable. Not only was I hopeful and grateful to have a chance for a cure, when I learned that this could open doors for other patients, I was all for it.”

Sharing hope

In October 2024, Missen matched with a donor after cardiac death (DCD) liver that had been assigned to another Northwestern Medicine patient – then 57-year-old Kelli Podrez of Hanover Park, Illinois. Podrez, who was listed higher on the transplant waitlist due to severe liver scarring (cirrhosis), agreed to share a piece of the liver that had been allocated to her.

“My medical team told me that the liver is like the skin; it regenerates and grows,” said Podrez. “If I could survive without the whole organ and help save someone’s life, why not share it?”

On Oct. 23, 2024, with Podrez’s consent, surgeons worked for eight hours to remove a graft roughly the size of a human hand from the donor liver. While surgeons split the organ, a machine pumped warm, oxygenated blood through the liver to keep it healthy. The larger portion was then transplanted into Podrez.

One operating room over, a separate team of surgeons removed half of Missen’s cancerous liver to make space for the donor liver. Since the graft was too small to support Missen on its own, half of his cancerous liver was left in place to provide enough liver function for him to survive. Once the graft was sewn in, surgeons directed blood flow to the area to encourage it to grow as quickly as possible. Within two weeks, Missen’s new liver had nearly doubled in size – it was now large enough to sustain him on its own.

On Nov. 7, 2024, Missen went back to the operating room to have the rest of his cancerous liver removed. Four months after surgery, Podrez and Missen’s new livers are working well. Missen has no evidence of cancer left in his body and is looking forward to getting back to his favorite activities: woodworking, camping, painting, building guitars, and spending time with his wife and two teenage children.

“I get emotional when I think about all the things that had to happen,” said Missen. “This donor and their family had to go through what they went through to make this possible. And on top of that, to have another person whose life is on the line be willing to share their hope with me – I can’t put into words how grateful I am for their generosity. I’m sitting here today because of that decision and my incredible Northwestern Medicine transplant team who made it happen.” 

“This procedure is incredibly rare and involves many moving parts,” said Dr. Nadig. “RAPID has been sparingly utilized outside of America, but by splitting a DCD liver on a machine perfusion pump, we’ve chosen to apply it in a unique way at Northwestern Medicine. On top of the skills, expertise, and technology a procedure like this requires, we have to have the collaborative culture to be able to simultaneously transplant these livers, working closely with oncologists and radiologists to make sure the cancer isn’t spreading while the new liver grows. Most importantly, we need a patient who is willing to share the gift of a new liver with another, and a patient who trusts us enough to participate in a first for the health system.”

About the CLEAR Research Registry

The outcomes of the CLEAR program’s first 80 patients will be tracked in a research registry also called CLEAR (Colorectal Metastasis to Liver Extraction with Auxiliary Transplant and Delayed Resection), available on ClinicalTrials.gov The research registry is focused on the outcomes of the treatment intervention. Participation in the research registry is voluntary. A patient may receive a RAPID transplant as part of the CLEAR program without enrolling in the CLEAR research registry. 

“There is still early, but accumulated evidence that shows that certain patients with cancer who receive transplants will derive equivalent or better outcomes than patients who receive transplants for more traditional indications,” said Dr. Dietch. “Transplant oncology is a new frontier in the field of transplant, and Northwestern Medicine is at the forefront. We look forward to providing hope to more patients who are being told the alternative is palliation and death.”

For more information about Northwestern Medicine’s transplant programs, visit nm.org.

CHICAGO – February 5, 2025 – In an effort to expand the donor pool for lung transplant recipients and give surgeons more time to removed diseased lungs, the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute (CTI) is now routinely repairing damaged donor lungs using “lungs in a box” (lung perfusion) technology and storing them for transplantation by putting “lungs in a fridge” (lung refrigeration). These innovative approaches are yielding dramatic benefits for patients and staff alike.

In 2024, CTI’s Lung Transplant Program finished the year by performing 148 lung transplants, their highest volume for a single year since the program began 10 years ago. For the first time, CTI also become the highest volume lung transplant center in the United States and achieved the shortest wait time for a lung transplant, with a median wait time of four days. 

“Since our lung transplant program launched 10 years ago, several innovations helped us reach these achievements for 2024. From performing the first COVID-19 lung transplants in the U.S., to starting a lung transplant program for select patients with advanced lung cancers, and replacing diseased lungs with breast implants to bridge patients to lung transplantation, we’re continuously thinking outside the box and ‘lungs in a fridge’ is another example,” said Ankit Bharat, MD, chief of thoracic surgery and director of the Canning Thoracic Institute. “In 2024, we used ‘lungs in a box’ to repair the most number of donor lungs that weren’t initially usable at Northwestern Medicine, enabling us to achieve a record wait list time of only four days. And now, with controlled lung refrigeration, we can keep the lungs alive outside the human body for an extended period of time, giving us more time to prepare for transplantation and perform the surgery.”

“With a combination of ‘lungs in a box’ and ‘lungs in a fridge’ technologies, we also now have the option for patients at any transplant center in the country or overseas who experience longer wait-times to dual list with us, and in 2024, patients traveled from places such as Germany, the United Kingdom and Columbia to receive a lung transplant at Northwestern Medicine,” said Ambalavanan Arunachalam, MD, pulmonologist and interim medical director of CTI’s Lung Transplant Program.  

Lung refrigeration was pioneered in Canada and Europe, and within the last few months, it was adopted successfully at Northwestern Medicine, where organ procurement specialists travel to hospitals across the United States to collect donor lungs, and once the lungs arrive at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, staff place them in a special refrigerator which is set at 10 degrees Celsius. The lungs can remain in the fridge up to 12 hours before transplantation when the conventional techniques only allowed them to stay outside for about six hours.  

“Prior to using the fridge, we were storing the donor lungs on ice, which is four degrees Celsius, and we had to perform the recipient lung implant surgery immediately without the opportunity to extend the preservation time,” said Anitha Chandrasekhar, DMSc, clinical lead for lung bioengineering with the Canning Thoracic Institute. “Studies show that 10-degree Celsius storage of lungs allows safe prolongation of cold ischemic times, results in better mitochondrial health with reduced inflammatory response, ultimately leading to better post-transplant outcomes, benefitting patients and health care teams.”

Four main benefits for using “lungs in a fridge”

Widens the donor pool

Lung refrigeration widens the donor pool by allowing Northwestern Medicine’s organ procurement team to travel greater distances for donor lungs. Previously, there was only so much time that the lungs could be kept alive outside the body, which restricted how far the organ procurement specialists could travel. From the moment they’d take the lungs out of the donor, they’d have six hours to package up the lungs, get to a local airport, fly to Chicago, drive to Northwestern Memorial, take the old lungs out and put the new lungs in.

“With this new type of preservation, our organ procurement specialists can fly to the East Coast, West Coast and potentially even Canada or Mexico. As a result, our wait times for lung transplant patients have dramatically gone down,” said Dr. Arunachalam.

Fewer overnight transplants

Storing donor lungs at 10 degrees Celsius allows for more flexible transplant scheduling. Lung refrigeration helps improve transplant logistics, which in turn, makes lung transplantation a semi-elective procedure performed during normal working hours.

“Previously, these transplants would happen in the middle of the night when the team may not be in the best physical or mental capacity. For example, if the procurement team arrives at 1 am with the donor lungs, we can now put the lungs in the fridge and wait to do the transplant at 7 am. By keeping the lungs preserved at 10 degrees Celsius, the team can operate during regular hours after a full night’s rest, which helps with success rates and lowers the chance of medical errors,” said Dr. Bharat. “Also, given the tough hours for lung transplant surgery, fewer surgeons have been interested in the field, resulting in a significant shortage of thoracic surgeons. But with this new strategy, more talented surgeons may be interested in adopting lung transplantation in their career.”

Improves surgical schedules

Transplants are often unpredictable. Donor lungs can become available on short notice, so in some instances, elective surgeries have to be cancelled in order to get the transplant done in time, which causes an inconvenience for patients who have been waiting for their elective surgeries (ex: cancer patients). “Lungs in a fridge” allows the surgical team to keep elective surgeries and schedule the lung transplant procedures during times that work best for staff and patients. It also helps lung transplant recipients because they no longer have to rush from their home to the hospital in a short period of time to get their lung transplants within the six-hour window.

“Lung refrigeration provides us with more options for getting our transplant recipients one step closer to a better quality of life,” said Denisha Gardner, organ procurement specialist with the Canning Thoracic Institute. “There are times when our recipients need a certain medication to be given hours before transplantation. Having the fridge allows us the opportunity to make sure everything is aligned for a successful procedure.”

More time to remove diseased lungs

Double-lung transplants are one of the most complex medical procedures in health care. Lung refrigeration gives surgeons more time to remove the diseased lungs, especially in patients with lung cancer.

Northwestern Medicine started a first-of-its-kind clinical program called DREAM that provides double-lung transplants to select patients with advanced lung cancers who are out of treatment options. With these patients, their cancer-ridden lungs must delicately be taken out at the same time along with the lymph nodes, then surgeons need to wash the airways and the chest cavity to clear the cancer before transplanting new lungs. These patients can have billions of cancer cells in the lungs, so surgeons must be extremely meticulous to not let a single cell spill into the patient’s chest cavity or blood stream.

Having more time in the operating room to remove the cancer-ridden lungs can help reduce the risk of recurrence.

Successful patient outcomes with lung refrigeration

Tadd Crosslin – Mansfield, Texas

Tadd Crosslin of Mansfield, Texas, (located in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area) received a double-lung transplant at Northwestern Memorial on September 23, 2024. The 49-year-old who is married (wife is Courtney) with twin sons (Cody and Blake), was diagnosed with stage 3 colorectal cancer in 2016 at the age of 40, and it advanced to stage 4 by 2019.

While undergoing chemotherapy and surgery, Crosslin’s medical team noticed lung nodules forming but told him not to worry. Soon, the lung nodules started multiplying and Crosslin had hundreds of tumors on his lungs, which caused him to have difficulty breathing.

“I traveled to major health systems in Texas, California, Florida, New Jersey, New York and even Germany, looking for a second opinion, but they all told me there was nothing more they could do,” said Crosslin. “Giving up was never an option for me, and Northwestern Medicine doesn’t shy away from exploring new techniques and technology. Without them, I wouldn’t be here today.”

On September 23, Crosslin received his new lungs, but the surgery wasn’t easy. Because there were so many tumors and extensive cancer inside Crosslin’s old lungs, his explant was extremely difficult (see pictures here).

“Having the refrigerator was a game-changer in Tadd’s lung transplant procedure,” added Dr. Bharat. “Because his diseased lungs were fused so tightly to his chest cavity, we kept needing more time to remove them. We couldn’t let his new lungs go bad, so we were able to store them in the fridge until we were ready to transplant them.”

The Double Lung Replacement and Multidisciplinary Care (DREAM) Program is a first-of-its-kind clinical initiative at Northwestern Medicine that provides double-lung transplants to select patients with advanced lung cancers who are not responding to conventional treatments. To date, more than 40 patients have received double-lung transplants through the DREAM Program.

Amanda Long – Nashville, Tennessee

Amanda Long of Nashville, Tenn., is also a DREAM patient. The 48-year-old wife (husband is James) and mother of three daughters (Kenzie, Maddie and Makenna) was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in September 2023.

“As a non-smoker who eats healthy and works out five-days-a-week, I was completely shocked by the diagnosis,” said Long.

When immunotherapy and chemotherapy treatments didn’t work, Long’s medical team in Nashville recommended she reach out to the lung transplant team at Northwestern Medicine. Long was listed for a lung transplant on August 15, 2024, and received her new lungs on August 21.

Because it took the surgical team longer to remove her diseased lungs due to the cancer, lung refrigeration was also used to store Long’s new lungs. Long is now back home in Nashville and will return to Northwestern Memorial once-a-month for follow up appointments.   

“The fridge is so simple and doesn’t further complicate what might be one of the more complex procedures in health care. If anything, it makes everything go more smoothly for the team in the operating room,” added Jeff Lysne, practice administrator for the Canning Thoracic Institute. “Overall, it’s been great to see such a simple innovation used to expand our donor pool and help more patients.”

For more information

In 2024, the lung transplant team used “lungs in a fridge” for approximately 12 patients, all with good outcomes. Since CTI’s Lung Transplant Program started in 2014, they’ve performed nearly 600 lung transplant procedures. Currently, more than 900 patients in the U.S. are waiting for new lungs.

Patients interested in being evaluated for a lung transplant can contact the referral line at 844.639.5864. For more information about Northwestern Medicine, as well as advanced therapies, visit nm.org. 

CHICAGO – After serving 21 years in the U.S. Army, Louis Smith’s heart only functioned at 10 percent. The father of three from Country Club Hills, Ill., had been visiting the Advanced Heart Failure Clinic at the Jesse Brown Veterans Affairs Medical Center (JBVA) for about one year before his symptoms suddenly got worse. Just before Thanksgiving 2023, the then 65-year-old was told he needed a new heart.  

Louis was transferred to Northwestern Memorial Hospital where he waited just two weeks for his new heart. Before his transplant surgery on December 31, 2023, he wasn’t nervous, wasn’t scared, but did have one request for his surgeon.  

“Can you do me a favor? When you cut me, can you try to save the tattoo on my chest?” said Smith. “It’s a saying that me and my late father used to say. We would listen to ‘I did it my way’ by Frank Sinatra. That’s our saying. If you can please not destroy the tattoo, I’ll be just fine.” 

Benjamin Bryner, MD, a cardiac surgeon at Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute, made sure both the incision and stiches would preserve every inch of Smith’s tattoo.  

“Mr. Smith had some tattoos that we were eager to save as best we could,” said Dr. Bryner. “There’s no way to do a transplant without leaving a scar behind, but we did our best to make sure the tattoos would at least line up and we were happy with the final results.”

Serving His Country and Needing a New Heart

Smith enlisted in the Army when he was just 17 years old, following in the footsteps of his father. His more than two decades of service took him through tours in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Germany, and Korea, but feeling his heart begin to fail was something this soldier was not prepared for.  

“I used to wake up every morning around two o’clock,” said Smith. “It felt like somebody was either choking me or standing on my chest. And I couldn’t breathe. It was like somebody just turned off my air.” 

Smith suffered from cardiac amyloidosis, an underdiagnosed disease that causes heart failure. It occurs when protein builds up and is deposited in tissues where it isn’t supposed to be. This can lead to organ damage, notably in the heart. Cardiac amyloidosis impacts up to 25 percent of people over the age of 80, with African American patients at a higher risk.  

During his time in the Army, Smith was active and never had any issues with his health. He was 63 years old by the time he learned about the genetic condition he’s had since birth. Because his case was so advanced, not only did he need a heart transplant, but Sarah Chuzi, MD, a heart failure and heart transplantation specialist at Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute and JBVA, recommended he be moved up on the list.  

“I went to visit him in the hospital and noticed he was short of breath just walking from his bed to the bathroom,” said Dr. Chuzi. “That was so out of character for him, so unlike him. I could tell that he really felt like things were changing rapidly. So, we recommended that he not only be listed for heart transplant but that he be listed at a very high status which gave him priority on the heart transplant list.”

Almost one year later, Smith is doing well and is back to his old routine. He enjoys spending time with his wife of 47 years, Jacquelyn, his three children, six grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. Smith is an avid biker, and often takes cross-country trips with friends on his motorcycle. He’s even taken one trip with his new heart.  

“I’m a soldier and a heart transplant survivor,” said Smith. “And I love my new heart.” 

More about the Advanced Heat Failure Clinic at the Jesse Brown Veterans Affairs Medical Center 

For more than 77 years, Northwestern Medicine has partnered with the Jesse Brown Veterans Affairs Medical Center (JBVA) in Chicago. Medical residents from the hospital system rotate through the VA clinic during their medical training, and it’s the longest-running academic affiliation in the VA system.  

In 2022, Sarah Chuzi, MD, a heart failure and heart transplantation specialist at Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute, established an Advanced Heart Failure Clinic at JBVA. Dr. Chuzi rotated through JBVA during her medical training and since then, she’s dedicated her career to helping veterans.

“The JBVA is very unique,” said Dr. Chuzi. “We serve about 62,000 veterans and about 70 percent of those veterans identify as Black. That is a population that is very underserved for a number of reasons. They face a lot of health barriers but also a lot of structural barriers to health like systemic racism, a lot of trauma, and PTSD. The combination of all these factors really does adversely affect their health.”

The clinic offers evidence-based heart failure care that includes medical therapy, devices, and other diagnostic tests and procedures. Patients from the heart failure clinic are often referred to Northwestern Medicine for specialized surgeries and treatments. Dr. Chuzi and her team will soon participate in heart failure clinical trials out of JBVA, including ones looking at new medications to improve patient outcomes.

To learn more about heart failure treatment options, visit nm.org. 

CHICAGO – October 13, 2024 – A Northwestern Medicine patient is celebrating one year cancer-free by running his second Chicago Marathon.

At age 60, Batbayar Tserendorj from Round Lake Beach, Ill., had been on the transplant waitlist for months. In early 2023, a liver cancer diagnosis likely caused by chronic hepatitis B and D infections left the husband, father and avid runner with a lot to process. With his medical team’s support, Tserendorj decided to move ahead with training for his first marathon.

“Running can improve cardiovascular function, which may support the body’s ability to recover from surgery,” said Northwestern Medicine transplant surgeon Juan Carlos Caicedo, MD. “After Batbayar finished radiation to shrink his liver tumor, we were supportive of him training while he waited on a match for a new liver."

“This was my chance,” said Tserendorj. “I wasn't sure if I would ever be able to run again, so I took up training for a marathon as a way to persist through the challenges I was facing.”

On Oct. 8, 2023, Tserendorj crossed the finish line of the Chicago Marathon. Nineteen days later, on Oct. 27, he returned to downtown Chicago to receive his liver transplant from the Northwestern Medicine Organ Transplant Center at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He calls that day his second birthday. He’s been cancer-free ever since.

“Batbayar’s entire medical team could see his drive to run the marathon, so we were happy to support his training and even happier to see him reach his goals," said Northwestern Medicine transplant hepatologist Amanda Cheung, MD. 

After his surgery, Tserendorj was determined to get back to running. With permission from his doctors, he ramped up his weekly mileage and finished the 2024 Chicago Marathon on Oct. 13.

“Like the marathon, my journey with cancer has been about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, and I see that in everyone from my donor to my incredible Northwestern Medicine medical team," said Tserendorj. "Liver transplantation is not a death sentence. It’s a second chance at life.”

Born in Mongolia, Tserendorj is from a part of the world with one of the highest rates of liver cancer, as chronic infection with hepatitis B, C, and D are key factors in developing the disease. These infections are highly prevalent in the country, and since they can be transmitted from mother to child during birth, many people are exposed to the viruses early in life, leading to long-term liver damage and increased cancer risk.

Each year, more than 800,000 people are diagnosed with liver cancer throughout the world and it is the second leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide.

CHICAGO – September 25, 2024 – In a pioneering medical breakthrough at Northwestern Medicine, surgeons have successfully performed a double-lung transplant on a patient with stage 4 colorectal cancer who had limited time to live. The procedure was achieved through the Double Lung Replacement and Multidisciplinary Care (DREAM) Program, a first-of-its-kind clinical initiative that was designed for select patients with advanced lung cancers that do not respond to contemporary treatments.

The patient, 42-year-old Amanda “Mandy” Wilk of Savage, Minn., had been battling stage 4 colorectal cancer since 2017, which had initially spread to her liver. After undergoing cancer treatments and receiving a liver transplant from her brother, the cancer returned – this time in her lungs. Facing few options for survival, Wilk sought out the DREAM program at Northwestern Medicine.

On June 3, Wilk received new lungs and was discharged from Northwestern Memorial Hospital one week later on June 10 – her 42^nd birthday. In a moment she had been waiting eight years for, Wilk rang the bell signaling she had completed cancer treatment. She currently has no signs of cancer in her body and doesn’t require any further cancer therapy.

“This is a first-of-its-kind surgery at Northwestern Medicine where a patient with stage 4 colorectal cancer has successfully received a double-lung transplant,” said Ankit Bharat, MD, chief of thoracic surgery and director of the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute. “Our surgical team meticulously removed Mandy’s cancer-ridden lungs without allowing any cancerous cells to spill into her bloodstream, and then we transplanted new lungs. Based on all the testing that’s available to us – CT scans, PET scans, and molecular analyses of circulating cancer DNA in Mandy’s blood – we don’t see any remaining signs of cancer in her body. While we’re optimistic about her future, it’s important to approach this with cautious optimism as further research is needed to understand the long-term outcomes.”

A Journey of Resilience and Innovation

Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer diagnosed in both men and women in the United States, with increasing numbers of people being diagnosed under the age of 50. When it metastasizes, it typically spreads to the liver or lungs, leaving few options for possible survival. Cancers of the lungs or those that travel to the lungs result in the most cancer-related deaths in the U.S.

Originally from Lake Zurich, Ill., Wilk moved to Minnesota where she works with the kindergarten through fifth grade teaching staff of Bloomington as an elementary curriculum and instruction specialist. In her spare time, Wilk enjoys running, the arts and attending sporting events with her partner and brothers.

In 2017, at the age of 34, Wilk thought she had food poisoning, but persistent symptoms led to a diagnosis of stage 4 colorectal cancer that had already spread to the liver. Wilk was given approximately two years to live. Treatments included a partial colon resection, chemotherapy, liver ablations and radiation beads on the liver, before receiving a liver transplant from her younger brother, Adam, in 2020. But six months later, the cancer returned – this time to the lungs.

“I traveled to almost every major health system across the country, and they all told me there was nothing more they could do,” said Wilk. “I believe in forward-thinking and was not going to take ‘no’ for answer, so when I inquired about the DREAM program at Northwestern Medicine, I was ecstatic that they were ready and eager to help me live.”

Wilk’s partner, Chris Withers, is a television producer for the Chicago White Sox, so Chicago was already like a second home to the couple. During the offseason, they live in Minnesota, but for Mandy, much of the summer is spent between Minnesota and Chicago. In March 2024, Wilk traveled to Chicago for a lung transplant evaluation and was then listed the day after Memorial Day. On June 3, Wilk received new lungs and one week later, she was doing so well that she was discharged from Northwestern Memorial on June 10 – which happened to be her 42nd birthday.

“Throughout my eight-year journey of battling cancer, the one thing I’ve always wanted to do was ‘ring the bell,’ signaling my completion of cancer treatment,” said Wilk. “Many doctors told me I’d never be able to ring it, so when my lung transplant social worker made it happen on my birthday, there was no greater feeling. I was finally able to celebrate being cancer-free.”

A New Chapter for Patients Facing Terminal Diagnoses

Wilk was recently given the “green light” by her lung transplant pulmonologist to start running again. While she continues to recover in Chicago for the next several months, Wilk can be found walking and jogging along Chicago’s lakefront trail. Her new goal is to one day run a marathon.

“Mandy has flown through the recovery process. Typically, lung transplant patients require several days, if not weeks, in a rehabilitation center, but because Mandy was young and made exercise a priority before transplant, rehab wasn’t needed,” said Catherine Myers, MD, lung transplant pulmonologist with the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute. “When Mandy asked me about being able to run again, I told her to start slow and gradually build up speed. Her determination has no limits, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Mandy cross another finish line in the near future. As a runner myself, if Mandy decides to run the Chicago Marathon someday, I would love to run alongside her.”

Giving Back and Inspiring Others

Beyond her medical journey, Wilk is passionate about art and uses the skill to help pay it forward. Four years ago, her brother Adam started Mandy’s Foundation which has raised more than $60,000 for the art therapy program at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. Since Mandy’s career has been dedicated to helping children, the goal is to provide positive experiences to children who are hospitalized during cancer treatment.  

“I have been given a new gift of life not once, but twice – first with my new liver, and now with my new lungs,” said Wilk. “When you’re diagnosed with cancer, often times you’re treated like a number and not a person, but my team at Northwestern Medicine, from the nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists and even the food service workers, all saw and treated me as Mandy. I hope my story inspires others to continue advocating for themselves.”

About the DREAM Program

The Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute is currently the only clinical site in the nation offering this treatment for lung cancer patients without any options. Using lessons learned from pioneering COVID-19 lung transplantation in the United States, surgeons developed the novel surgical technique to clear the cancer during surgery while minimizing the risk of spread that has plagued prior such attempts at other hospitals.

“Unlike the conventional technique of sequential transplants, this innovative technique involves putting the patient on full heart and lung bypass, delicately taking both cancer-ridden lungs out at the same time along with the lymph nodes, washing the airways and the chest cavity to clear the cancer, and then transplanting new lungs,” said Dr. Bharat. “These patients can have billions of cancer cells in the lungs, so we must be extremely meticulous to not let a single cell spill into the patient’s chest cavity or blood stream. We believe this technique can help reduce the risk of recurrence.”

To date, surgeons have performed more than 40 successful lung transplants for cancer patients under the DREAM program. The outcomes of the program’s patients are being tracked in a research registry also called DREAM.

“While we are encouraged by success stories like Mandy's, it's important to recognize that this is a highly specialized procedure that may not be suitable for all patients with metastatic cancer,” added Dr. Bharat. “Careful evaluation and selection are key to ensuring the best possible outcomes.”

Patients interested in being evaluated for a lung transplant can contact the referral line at 844.639.5864. 

For more information about Northwestern Medicine’s lung transplant programs, as well as advanced therapies, visit nm.org. 

CHICAGO - Aug. 7, 2024 - Northwestern Medicine surgeons have performed an awake kidney transplant for the second time. The patient, 74-year-old Harry Stackhouse of Zion, Ill., felt no pain during the procedure and was home 36 hours after surgery. General anesthesia inherently poses a risk to anyone, but when older patients with end stage kidney failure go under general anesthesia, they tend to have more significant cognitive impairment, heart and lung issues and decreased return of their gastrointestinal tract. Stackhouse fit the criteria for what Northwestern Medicine is hoping to do as it establishes the AWAKE Kidney Program (Accelerated Surgery Without General Anesthesia in Kidney Transplantation).

“Patients like Harry are exactly who the AWAKE Kidney Program was built for,” said Satish Nadig, MD, PhD, transplant surgeon and director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Transplant Center who performed Stackhouse’s transplant. “Patients who have cardiopulmonary disease may be at higher risk for general anesthesia. There are also some patients around the country who have had complications from their intubations in the past and do not want to be intubated. An awake kidney transplant procedure could be their best option.”

Stackhouse’s surgery was on July 15 and took a little over an hour. He could have been discharged 24 hours after surgery, but Northwestern Medicine doctors elected to keep him in the hospital a little longer due to his age and because his kidney was working so well they wanted to make sure he could stay hydrated. 

“Not one time did I feel pain during surgery – not even the spinal shot – I didn’t feel anything,” Stackhouse said. “My recovery has been very smooth. I was walking and eating solid foods the same day as my surgery, and I walked a half mile around my neighborhood the day I got home from the hospital. Currently, I walk a mile every day, take my medications and get my blood drawn to make sure everything looks good. I haven’t had any downtime with this procedure.” 

Stackhouse – a father of six and grandfather to 17 – began feeling ill in December 2019 and thought it was the flu. He fought through it for about three months, but after he could hardly walk or breathe, his children told him something was wrong and took him to the emergency department at Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital. 

Not only was Stackhouse diagnosed with COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic, but one of his kidneys was failing and the other was only working at two percent. Stackhouse was immediately put on dialysis, and he remained on it for four years until the option of a kidney transplant was presented to him.

His daughter, 45-year-old Trewaunda Stackhouse of Waukegan, Ill., stepped up to donate one of her kidneys. Harry Stackhouse was content with being on dialysis and his daughter had to convince him to get a kidney transplant.

“I didn’t want a transplant because I didn’t want to intrude on any of my kids’ lives,” explained Harry Stackhouse. “I told them, ’Live your life; your dad can handle this,’ but Trewaunda insisted. I am so thankful, and I can’t say ‘thank you’ enough. I give all the praise to her and my medical team at Northwestern Medicine.” 

“I wanted my dad to get a kidney transplant so he could go back to living the way he was before his renal failure and go back to work,” said Trewaunda Stackhouse. “From the beginning, when he was diagnosed with renal failure, I thought to myself that he should have a kidney transplant. I didn’t like seeing the downside effects of his dialysis three times a week. I wanted him to get back to doing the things he enjoyed without being tired.” 

Not only did Harry Stackhouse need be convinced to get a kidney transplant, but his daughter convinced him to be awake during the transplant procedure after Dr. Nadig suggested the idea.  

“Dr. Nadig said it would be a much better procedure for me due to my age and potential side effects from general anesthesia. I was skeptical at first, but Trewaunda assured me it would be okay. She said, ‘Dad, this is the same type of anesthesia that’s used when women have C-sections; you can do this,’” said Harry Stackhouse, who also remembers seeing his daughter’s kidney during surgery before it was transplanted into him. “Dr. Nadig showed it to me and the first thing I said was, ‘That kidney is big!’”

With his new kidney and new lease on life, he hopes to return to one of his favorite hobbies: fishing. 

“By using a spinal anesthetic for kidney transplantation, we’re able to bypass the risks associated with general anesthesia. Additionally, older patients like Harry won’t have the recovery period associated with intubation and being on a ventilator, which improves the patient experience,” said Dr. Nadig. “Harry’s surgery took less than two hours, and he was discharged 36 hours later. The AWAKE Program opens the door for countless patients like Harry who can get home and get back to doing what they love with the people they love much quicker.” 

Northwestern Medicine surgeons performed their first awake kidney transplant on May 24. The patient, 28-year-old John Nicholas of Chicago, was discharged less than 24 hours after surgery and continues to do well. 

To learn more about Northwestern Medicine’s kidney transplant program, visit nm.org.

CHICAGO – June 24, 2024 – For the first time at Northwestern Medicine, surgeons have performed a kidney transplant procedure where the patient was awake during the entire surgery and was discharged home the next day. The patient, 28-year-old John Nicholas of Chicago, felt no pain during the procedure and was home less than 24-hours after surgery. Instead of using the normal general anesthesia, Northwestern Medicine doctors used a spinal anesthesia shot. This option may open the door to increase access to transplantation for patients who are high-risk to undergo general anesthesia, while also decreasing the length of a transplant patient’s hospital stay.  

“This is the first case at Northwestern Medicine where a patient was awake during an entire kidney transplant procedure and went home the next day, basically making this an outpatient procedure. Our hope is that awake kidney transplantation can decrease some of the risks of general anesthesia while also shortening a patient’s hospital stay,” said Satish Nadig, MD, PhD, transplant surgeon and director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Transplant Center. “Inside the operating room, it was an incredible experience being able to show a patient what their new kidney looked like before placing it inside the body.”

On May 24, Dr. Nadig, Vinayak Rohan, MD, transplant surgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and Vicente Garcia Tomas, MD, anesthesiologist and chief of regional anesthesiology and acute pain medicine at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, performed the surgery which took less than two hours. The patient received a type of anesthesia that’s similar to what’s used during a cesarean section.  

“Doing anesthesia for the awake kidney transplant was easier than many C-sections,” said Dr. Garcia Tomas. “For John’s case, we placed a spinal anesthesia shot in the operating room with a little bit of sedation for comfort. It was incredibly simple and uneventful, but allowed John to be awake for the procedure, improving the patient experience. Not only can awake kidney transplantation help patients who have risks or phobias to general anesthesia, but it can help shorten their hospital stay so they can recover more comfortably at home.”

Nicholas didn’t have any risks or phobias to general anesthesia but was a great candidate for the procedure due to his age, limited risk factors and his eagerness to participate in a medical first for Northwestern Medicine.

“It was a pretty cool experience to know what was happening in real time and be aware of the magnitude of what they were doing,” said Nicholas. “At one point during surgery, I recall asking, ‘should I be expecting the spinal anesthesia to kick in?’ They had already been doing a lot of work and I had been completely oblivious to that fact. Truly, no sensation whatsoever. I had been given some sedation for my own comfort, but I was still aware of what they were doing. Especially when they called out my name and told me about certain milestones they had reached.”

After a successful surgery on May 24, Nicholas was discharged the next day and walked out of the hospital on May 25. The normal hospitalization for patients who undergo a kidney transplant at Northwestern Memorial Hospital is typically 2-3 days.

Nicholas’ best friend since elementary school donates kidney to him 

At the age of 16, Nicholas began having kidney issues after being diagnosed with Crohn’s disease years prior. Routine lab work showed his kidney function had declined and further testing determined there was inflammation in his kidneys that was causing damage, but the root cause was never found.

He was able to avoid dialysis and managed it with medication. But after moving to Chicago in early 2022 and establishing care at Northwestern Medicine, his kidney function declined, and it became clear he would eventually need a kidney transplant.

Nicholas credits his Northwestern Medicine nephrologist, Cybele Ghossein, MD, for directing him through the pre-transplant workup and stretching out the life of his natural kidneys as long as possible.

But there were some challenges in finding Nicholas a donor. His mother originally planned to be his donor but was then unable to donate following a breast cancer diagnosis. Nicholas then turned to the group of friends he’s known since elementary school while growing up in the Indianapolis suburb of Zionsville, Indiana. His best friend, 29-year-old Pat Wise who lives in Alexandria, Va., and works for a public health agency, remembers getting that text.

“I was in my kitchen cooking dinner and John sent a message that read, ‘my doctor says it’s time for me to start looking for kidney donors.’ I stared at my phone and without hesitating, filled out the form that night,” said Wise. “John is a good friend. He needed a kidney, and I had an extra one. I had to at least explore the potential of being his donor.”

Wise was declared a match and traveled to Chicago where surgeons removed one of his kidneys and transplanted it into Nicholas.

“I have been blessed with a friend group that has stayed together from such a young age,” said Nicholas. “We always called ourselves ‘ride or die’ friends, and this example shows that we have each other’s backs. It meant the world to me. It’s truly been life-changing.”

Before the transplant, Nicholas had to limit his salt intake, but is now looking forward to enjoying pizza and having more energy to ride his bicycle around Chicago.

“When John agreed to be the first known patient at Northwestern Medicine to undergo an awake kidney transplant and be discharged home the next day, he knew the benefits outweighed the risks, and because of him, he’s now helping to move the field of transplantation forward,” said Dr. Rohan. “He is an extremely compliant patient who was in tune with his body and willing to push the envelope. He had the upmost faith in us, and we had the upmost faith in him. He really was otherwise quite healthy, and we felt we that he would be the best first candidate to really set Northwestern Medicine’s awake kidney transplant program up for success.”

Going forward, Northwestern Medicine will look to establish the AWAKE Program (Accelerated Surgery Without General Anesthesia in Kidney Transplantation) for a particular subsets of patients that want the operation, can’t have general anesthesia or have a high-risk of general anesthesia, or fit into a category where this could benefit the patient.

“It really opens up a whole new door and is another tool in our toolbelt for the field of transplantation,” said Dr. Nadig.

To learn more about Northwestern Medicine’s kidney transplant program, visit nm.org.

“Performing 10,000 abdominal transplants is a tremendous milestone for Northwestern Medicine,” said Satish Nadig, MD, PhD, chief of the division of abdominal organ transplantation and director of the comprehensive transplant center at Northwestern Medicine. “Through organ transplantation, we have saved the lives of over 10,000 patients. As physicians, nurses, social workers and staff, we celebrate every life saved by an organ transplant. As we achieve this unique milestone, it was also time to reflect and thank the patients and family members who chose to donate their organs to save lives.” 

Starting in 1964, Northwestern Medicine’s organ transplant program is one of the largest and longest running in Illinois. It has performed: 

• More than 6,500 kidney transplants – the first program in Illinois to achieve that feat;
• More than 2,600 liver transplants - the first program in Illinois to achieve that feat;
• More than 850 pancreas transplants – the first program in Illinois to achieve that feat.

In 2023, Northwestern Medicine performed 518 abdominal transplants, which was eighth in the nation for transplant volume (includes heart and lung transplants). Northwestern Medicine is the largest transplant and living donor program in Illinois and one of the largest in the United States, performing 347 kidney transplants, 138 liver transplants and 33 pancreas transplants in 2023 and ranks seventh in the nation in kidney transplant volume, 29^th in liver transplant volume and third in pancreas volume. 

“As we look towards the future, Northwestern Medicine is on the cusp of the next era of transplant with advances in technology and innovation,” said Dr. Nadig. “It’s an exciting time in transplant and we are committed to continually improve the field with the goal of improving the lives of our patients.” 

A leader in equitable access in transplantation, Northwestern Medicine founded the Hispanic Transplant Program and the African American Transplant Program.

Northwestern Medicine Hispanic Transplant Program the first program in the country to address the needs of Hispanic and Spanish-speaking patients

Started in December 2006, the Northwestern Medicine Hispanic Transplant Program is the first program in the United States providing transplant care for English and Spanish-speaking Hispanic patients, offering a culturally sensitive program that serves Hispanic patients and families who need transplants.

“We established the Northwestern Medicine Hispanic Transplant Program because there was a significant need in the Hispanic community,” said Juan Carlos Caicedo, MD, founder and director of the Northwestern Medicine Hispanic Transplant Program. “We now have more than 60 team members supporting the program, focused on serving the Hispanic community. Our team is bilingual and bicultural, and we have increased organ donation while improving access to transplant care in the Hispanic community.”

Since 2007, the Northwestern Medicine Hispanic Transplant Program has performed over 1,600 transplants – all abdominal organs – in Hispanic and Latino patients.  

Northwestern Medicine African American Transplant Access Program addresses disparities in access to transplantation experienced by the Black community 

Founded in 2019, the Northwestern Medicine African American Transplant Access Program breaks down barriers to transplant care in the African American community through access to education, resources and transplant care. 

“As we approach our 50^th transplant procedure through the Northwestern Medicine African American Transplant Access Program, we are seeing the results of equitable access to transplant care,” said Dinee Simpson, MD, founder and director of the Northwestern Medicine African American Transplant Program and chief health equity executive at Northwestern Medicine. “We will continue to break down barriers to transplant for African American patients by helping them navigate the transplant process, rebuilding their trust in healthcare and continuing to be a trusted destination for transplantation among African American patients.” 

The Northwestern Medicine African American Transplant Access Program addresses patient distrust in health care, cultural competency, health literacy and psychosocial support.

Driven by research and clinical trial offerings 

The Northwestern Medicine Organ Transplant Center currently has over 90 active clinical trials and has received $8 million in federal funding for transplant research. Including heart and lung transplants, Northwestern Medicine performed 651 transplants in 2023, which is eighth nationally in transplant volume, 97 lung transplants – fourth in the nation – and 37 heart transplants, which is 44^th in the nation. 

People who are interested in becoming living donors can visit nmlivingdonor.org.

For more information on the Northwestern Medicine Organ Transplant Center, visit nm.org.

CHICAGO – May 13, 2024 – For the first time at Northwestern Medicine, surgeons have successfully performed a double-lung transplant on a patient who had the one lung damaged from lung cancer and the other damaged by COVID-19. The patient, 56-year-old Arthur “Art” Gillespie of Chicago, has worked in law enforcement for nearly 30 years, most recently as a captain with the University of Chicago Police Department. When doctors at other health systems told Gillespie there was nothing more they could do for him, he turned to the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute, where surgeons pioneered lung transplantation for COVID-19 patients in the United States and using those same lessons, developed lung transplantation for select patients with advanced lung cancer through a first-of-its-kind clinical program called the Double Lung Replacement and Multidisciplinary Care (DREAM) Program.

“Arthur was in a unique situation because he got a severe case of COVID in March 2020 right around the same time he was diagnosed with lung cancer,” said Ankit Bharat, MD, chief of thoracic surgery and director of the Canning Thoracic Institute who performed Gillespie’s transplant. “When Arthur first came to see us in September 2023, even though he looked physically strong, he could barely speak a single sentence without getting short of breath or take a few steps before having to sit down. The pressure inside the lungs had also increased to a point that it was causing heart failure, and his only option for survival was a double-lung transplant.”

“Four years after the start of the pandemic, COVID still has an impact on patients, but in a different way,” said Rade Tomic, MD, pulmonologist and medical director of the Lung Transplant Program. “While lung transplants for acute damage from COVID is quite rare these days, we’re now starting to see patients who may have had moderate to severe cases of COVID coming in with signs of lung fibrosis. The scarring of the lungs gets more heightened in patients who recovered from COVID but get another respiratory infection like COVID, RSV or influenza because it compounds the original damage that COVID caused.”

When the pandemic started, Gillespie never imagined it would lead to him needing a double-lung transplant, or the impact the virus would have on his family.

“I lost my dad, uncle and cousin to COVID,” said Gillespie. “In February 2020, my dad and I went to visit my uncle in a nursing facility and by early March, we were all sick. I was hospitalized for 12 days with a high fever and cough, and during that time, they were taking scans of my lungs, which showed stage 1 lung cancer on my right lung. I had no symptoms of lung cancer, so in a way – because of COVID – we were able to catch the cancer early.”

After being discharged from the hospital, Gillespie started chemotherapy treatments and underwent surgery at another health system in November 2020 to have two-thirds of his right lung removed. His intent was to get better and return to work, but that never happened. For the next three years, Gillespie continued physical therapy treatments and worked out at his home gym, but his body was getting weaker, and he needed supplemental oxygen daily.

“Despite my best efforts, I could feel myself going backwards. My right remaining lung was damaged from lung cancer, and my left lung was damaged from COVID. My circumstances were exactly what the Canning Thoracic Institute was built for, and I knew I needed to seek a second opinion,” said Gillespie.

In September 2023, Gillespie had his first consultation at Northwestern Medicine, and by November he was listed for a double-lung transplant. On January 6, Gillespie received his new lungs at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and continues getting stronger every day. May 12-18 marks National Police Week, and while Gillespie still isn’t sure if or when he can return to work as a police captain, he hopes his story resonates with fellow officers to prioritize their health.  

“My recovery from the double-lung transplant has been easier than my recovery from lung cancer surgery,” said Gillespie. “I want my story to serve as a lesson to others – especially those in law enforcement. When you’re a public servant, it’s easy to become distracted with the routine of the job. You’re used to putting others before your own health, but we have to be equally proactive and seek a second opinion when we know something isn’t right. A second opinion saved my life and I’m overwhelmed with gratitude for Northwestern Medicine. The lung transplant team listened to my concerns, didn’t dismiss them, and gave me a sense of direction.”

“Arthur is a fighter. He had two major problems – lung cancer and COVID. Historically, both would be considered non-salvageable for lung transplantation, but we were able to treat both of those conditions with a double-lung transplant procedure,” said Dr. Bharat. “Despite being told ‘no’ by other doctors, Arthur had the courage and determination to keep searching for answers. I feel honored that we were able to help him since he spent so many years helping the community as a police captain.”

 To date, the Canning Thoracic Institute has performed more than 45 lung transplants for COVID-19 patients, and more than 40 lung transplants for lung cancer patients. The Institute is currently the only clinical site in the nation offering this treatment for lung cancer patients without any other options.

Cancers of the lung are the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States in both men and women with more people dying of lung cancer than colon, breast and prostate cancers combined. Patients interested in being evaluated for a lung transplant can contact the referral line at 844.639.5864. For more information about Northwestern Medicine’s transplant programs, as well as advanced therapies, visit nm.org. 

CHICAGO – March 28, 2024 – For the first time at Northwestern Medicine, surgeons have successfully performed a combined lung-liver transplant on a patient with advanced lung cancer who had limited time to live. The patient, 69-year-old Gary Gibbon, MD, a pulmonologist, allergist and immunologist from Santa Monica, Cali., was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer in March 2023. After undergoing chemotherapy, radiation and immunotherapy at a California hospital, Dr. Gibbon was admitted to the intensive care unit, where he learned the immunotherapy had not only permanently destroyed his lungs, but also caused irreparable damage to his liver. His only option for survival would be traveling to Chicago for a combined lung-liver transplant, where a first-of-its-kind clinical program called Double Lung Replacement and Multidisciplinary Care (DREAM) was established for select patients with advanced lung cancers that do not respond to conventional treatments. In September 2023, Dr. Gibbon received his new lungs and liver from the same donor, and six months after surgery, Dr. Gibbon still has no signs of cancer in his body and doesn’t require any further cancer therapy.

“To our knowledge, this is the first known case in the nation where a patient with advanced lung cancer has successfully received a combined lung-liver transplant,” said Ankit Bharat, MD, chief of thoracic surgery and director of the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute who performed Dr. Gibbon’s lung transplant. “The purpose of DREAM is to help patients with some forms of late-stage cancers that are only limited to the lungs through double-lung transplantation if conventional or experimental treatments have failed. In Dr. Gibbon’s case, he received all possible treatments for his aggressive lung cancer. Unfortunately, not only did his cancer not get treated, but he also developed severe damage to his lungs and liver that was unsustainable with life. He was running out of time, and the DREAM program was his only option for survival.”  

“Even though a combined lung-liver transplant for advanced lung cancer had never been done before, our team was confident we could do this, and more importantly, Dr. Gibbon had full confidence in us,” said Satish Nadig, MD, PhD, transplant surgeon and director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Transplant Center who performed Dr. Gibbon’s liver transplant. “We’re not just here to do transplant – we’re here to change the world of transplantation by innovating and moving the field forward. Out-of-the-box thinking is exactly what we hang our hat on at Northwestern Medicine, and without this procedure, I can confidently say that Dr. Gibbon would not be here today, cancer-free, breathing on his own, celebrating his 69^th birthday.”

Originally from Cape Town, South Africa, Dr. Gibbon moved to Santa Monica where he was in private practice for 33 years until his recent hospitalization. He’s also an associate professor at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. In March 2023, Dr. Gibbon started coughing and losing weight; a chest X-ray confirmed a mass with a diagnosis of stage 3 lung cancer. He proceeded with chemotherapy, immunotherapy and radiation, and by mid-July he was hospitalized with septic shock, pneumonia and multiple organ failure. His lungs had become fibrotic due to the cancer treatment, and he was fighting for his life in a Los Angeles intensive care unit.

“As a pulmonologist, I never imagined I’d ever need a lung transplant – let alone for lung cancer,” said Dr. Gibbon. “While my doctors in California had done everything they could, we knew there was only one place in the entire country that could give me a fighting chance, and after speaking with Dr. Bharat, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

“Dr. Gibbon met the criteria to receive a double-lung transplant through our DREAM program, but as the preliminary evaluation was performed prior to his acceptance to Northwestern Medicine, our team discovered that he had also developed liver cirrhosis from the immunotherapy. We had to modify our DREAM program and work with Dr. Nadig’s team to formulate a pathway for Dr. Gibbon to receive not only a double-lung transplant, but a concurrent liver transplant. Fortunately, we were able to do it just in time for Dr. Gibbon to receive this first-of-its-kind procedure,” said Dr. Bharat.

On Sept. 10, the then 68-year-old was transported to Chicago via a four-hour medical flight and waited for new organs from his ICU bed at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. After spending 12 days on the transplant waitlist, Dr. Gibbon received his new lungs shortly before midnight on Sept. 26, and his new liver in the early hours on Sept. 27.

Drs. Bharat and Nadig worked together during the 10-hour procedure. While the new lungs were put in first, the donor liver was kept alive outside the body thanks to new technology called liver perfusion – or “liver in a box.” The liver was attached to a machine that pumps warm, oxygenated and nutrient-enriched blood through the organ. With the liver was on the pump, the team could assess its function to ensure the liver was ideal for transplantation.

“Transplantation is ever evolving and we’re embarking upon the era of technology. Dr. Bharat anticipated that the lung transplant would be extremely challenging due to the size of Dr. Gibbon’s tumor and the different types of treatments, including radiation, to the lungs and chest which would result in the lungs getting fused to the surrounding structures. To give Dr. Bharat sufficient time to meticulously remove the damaged lungs and all the cancer, we used the new liver perfusion technology through which we were able to keep the liver alive outside the body for an extended duration,” said Dr. Nadig. “Dr. Gibbon’s transplant took so many resources and teams across multiple departments at multiple health systems. To leave his ICU bed in California, travel to Chicago, get him listed, then transplanted, while using technologies and techniques that aren’t common, took extreme efforts. Northwestern Medicine handles complicated cases very well.”

To date, the Canning Thoracic Institute (CTI) has performed more than 30 lung transplants for patients under the DREAM program, including several with terminal stage IV lung cancer and one in which cancer from another organ had spread to the lungs. Using lessons learned from pioneering COVID-19 lung transplantation in the United States, CTI surgeons developed the novel surgical technique to clear the cancer during surgery while minimizing the risk of spread that has plagued prior such attempts at other hospitals.

“Unlike the conventional technique of sequential transplants, this innovative technique involves putting the patient on full heart and lung bypass, delicately taking both cancer-ridden lungs out at the same time along with the lymph nodes, washing the airways and the chest cavity to clear the cancer, and then putting new lungs in,” said Dr. Bharat. “These patients can have billions of cancer cells in the lungs, so we must be extremely meticulous to not let a single cell spill into the patient’s chest cavity or blood stream. We believe this technique can help reduce the risk of recurrence, which we learned through our experience with pioneering COVID-19 lung transplants.”

The outcomes of the program’s patients are being tracked in a research registry also called DREAM. Dr. Gibbon is grateful to have his name added to the list and is even more appreciative to celebrate his birthday (March 27) and National Doctors’ Day (March 30) with two of the physicians who helped save his life. To date, the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute is the only place in the nation offering this treatment for patients without any other hope.

“I’ve been a physician for decades, and we tend to be conservative at times with our treatment plans, which is why the enormity of the science that went into this procedure is awe-inspiring to me,” said Dr. Gibbon. “As a physician, I knew I was in the right place. I wasn’t just stepping on the moon by myself. It took surgeons, oncologists, transplant specialists, nurses, respiratory therapists and most importantly, my donor, to help me get my ‘Triple L’ – two lungs and a liver. This DREAM program is new territory for transplantation and the fact that I could experience it and have a wonderful outcome makes me feel so blessed. I wouldn’t be here today without Northwestern Medicine.”

“Because Dr. Gibbon is a pulmonologist and allergy specialist, he’s familiar with lung diseases, which made this case even more special,” said Dr. Bharat. “As physicians helping another physician, we feel very proud that we were able to do something that hopefully opens the doors for future patients who would otherwise not survive.”

Cancers of the lung are the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States with more people dying of lung cancer than colon, breast and prostate cancers combined. Lung cancer patients interested in being evaluated for a lung transplant can contact the referral line at 844.639.5864. For more information about Northwestern Medicine’s transplant programs, as well as advanced therapies, visit nm.org.  

After surviving his third liver transplant, a kidney transplant, brain surgery and numerous other complications, holiday celebrations mean more than ever this year to Will Fleming and his partner, Mary Wright. To the Wilmette couple, it doesn’t seem that long ago that transplant hepatologist Josh Levitsky, MD, shared crushing news.

“Will, I’m sorry but we have to take you off the liver-kidney transplant list right now.”

Fleming had become too weak to survive a liver-kidney transplant surgery, and Dr. Levitsky gave him direct but hopeful discharge instructions: Go home. Gain weight. Get stronger.

While it was frustrating to hear he wasn’t eligible for a transplant, Fleming, 68, understood the realities more than most. It was to be his third liver transplant. The first had been in 2005, and within a year that liver failed. His second liver transplant went smoothly, and Fleming lived a full life for 12 years, even returning to cycling 40 to 50 miles at a time. He was an active member of the Evanston Bicycle Club and traveled the country to cycle in scenic locations.

It was after one of his 50-mile rides in 2021 that Fleming rapidly began to feel ill, and he asked Wright to take him to the hospital. Tests showed blood clots in the artery that supplied blood to the liver, and Fleming learned he would need a third liver transplant.

“I was in the best shape of my life when they said I needed another transplant, so it was really hard to believe when they told me,” Fleming, a Wilmette resident, said. “I was cycling, lifting weights and doing calisthenics regularly. I’d been so healthy for so long it took a while to realize I was actually sick again.”

Fleming was placed on the liver transplant list, and his health continued to decline. His kidneys failed, and he began dialysis. Then, he was told he’d also need a kidney transplant at the same time.

“He got down to 99 pounds, and he’s 5-feet-11,” Wright said. “When he became too sick for transplant surgery, a number of his physicians began suggesting different options. They didn’t use the word hospice, but I knew they were talking about just keeping him comfortable.”

Wright asked Fleming if he understood what his physicians were saying. He thought about it for a minute, looked at her and said, “I’m not ready.”

That was the turning point for Fleming, who committed to eating a little more each day. As he gained weight, he gained energy, which he used for light workouts to regain his strength. He put on 15 pounds and went to see Dr. Levitsky for a follow-up appointment.

“It’s a lot to be invested in a patient and then have to make a difficult decision to take them off the transplant list, but we’d discussed it as a transplant team and knew the risks were too high for Will,” Dr. Levitsky said. “Then he came into my office, and it was obvious he’d been working hard to get healthier. I’d set parameters for nutrition, weight, physical function and frailty, and over three or four months he was able to get there. That just showed the will he had to live and that he was a fighter.”

During that appointment, Fleming noticed he wasn’t the only one who had changes to his health.

“Dr. Levitsky was looking good,” Fleming said. “He looked a bit leaner, and he had the light tan of someone who spends a lot of time in the sun. He said he’d started cycling more and promised me he’d go for a ride after I got a transplant and recovered. I told him he had a deal.”

After the appointment, Dr. Levitsky began a campaign to get Fleming back on the transplant list.

“He went to every surgeon on the liver transplant team and talked to them about Will and his recent improvement, and he got them all to agree that they would do Will's transplant,” Wright said. “It was remarkable that he did that.”

Dr. Levitsky said he had to try because Fleming had been tenacious and he’d shown great improvement.

“Our transplant team has very high standards and there was still a lot of nervousness about Will, but we decided to go ahead,” Dr. Levitsky said. “There were people who were in his corner and there were people who were worried about him not surviving the third transplant.”

A week after he was relisted for a liver-kidney transplant, Fleming was called to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for the 14-hour surgery. Then came a recovery that was filled with complications.

Fleming suffered a rare brain bleed and an uncommon disease that forced him to lose the ends of his toes. He needed a feeding tube to provide extra nutrition, and he broke his neck, hip and arm after falls at home.

His recovery took longer than he had expected, but eventually Fleming won the fight and felt strong enough to ride a stationary bike. This fall, he rode his first outdoor miles and shared the good news with Dr. Levitsky, who was delighted to share the news with his colleagues.

“He took a picture with us and showed it to everyone on the transplant team,” Wright said. “He was so proud of Will’s recovery.”

After completing boot camp at Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago, Ill., Patterson was stationed at the Naval Air Station in Alameda, Calif. With three western Pacific tours on the USS Carl Vinson, Patterson had the unique experience of living on an aircraft carrier while visiting more places in four years than many people visit in a lifetime.

“I’m very proud of my time in the Navy and very thankful for the experiences it gave me,” said Patterson, who now lives in Park Forest, Illinois. “Those tours gave me the opportunity to see the world. We went everywhere from Hawaii to Australia, Singapore, the Philippines and more. It was like a dream vacation while living on a city at sea.”

When Patterson discharged from the Navy, he returned to California for 10 years before returning to federal service taking a role with the United States Postal Service (USPS). He worked for USPS for nearly 25 years when he was offered a promotion that would bring him to Minnesota. A year and half after his move, Patterson started to notice changes in his health.

“It came on very suddenly. I was working in the mailroom and started feeling short of breath when walking just short distances from one side of the room to the other. I knew something was wrong,” said Patterson, who left work and drove to the nearest urgent care clinic.  

After being told he needed a higher level of care, Patterson drove himself to the emergency department at the nearest academic medical center in Minneapolis. He would not see the outside of a hospital again for three weeks.

“I lost consciousness in the ER that night and when I woke up the next morning, they told me I had 13 TIAs, or miniature strokes, overnight,” said Patterson. “The doctors told me that these were warning signs and the big one will come if I didn’t seek treatment immediately.”

Patterson’s health continued to decline, and he spent the next two months in and out of the hospital. He was soon diagnosed as being in congestive heart failure (CHF) with his heart functioning at less than five percent. His best option for survival would be a heart transplant or left ventricular assist device (LVAD).

He made the decision to return to Chicago where he had family support from his sister. They drove from Minnesota directly to Jesse Brown VA Medical Center where he would meet Sarah E. Chuzi, MD, cardiologist at Jesse Brown VA Medical Center and at Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute, who had recently established an onsite advanced heart failure clinic for veterans at Jesse Brown. Patterson would be in and out of the hospital for the next three months while his medical team assessed his condition.

“Dwayne got sick very quickly. When I first saw him in clinic, he could barely get onto the exam table without shortness of breath,” said Dr. Chuzi, who first began caring for patients at Jesse Brown VA during her medical residency. “If you have taken care of a veteran, or met a veteran, you know that they are very stoic, and they are unlikely to complain. So, I knew, just looking in his eyes, that he was very sick and really scared and that he needed an intervention quickly.”

Dr. Chuzi and a multidisciplinary team of Northwestern Medicine and VA clinicians began the process of evaluating Patterson for a heart transplant. They soon determined that he was likely to benefit, so he was added to the heart transplant waiting list in March. Patterson was too sick to go home, so he was admitted to Northwestern Memorial Hospital to wait for a donor heart, which came in April 2023.

“I remember the day the call came. I was in the hospital and not feeling well, then they told me, ‘We found you a heart and we want to schedule surgery,’” recalls Patterson. “You know, I never feared. I’m a man of faith, which guided me. The sickness had just come on so fast. But I knew I had the best medical team at one of the best hospitals for a heart transplant and at the VA. I was ready.”

The advanced heart failure collaboration between Northwestern Medicine and Jesse Brown VA Medical Center is a continuation of a longstanding relationship between the two organizations. For more than 77 years, medical residents from Northwestern have rotated through the VA during their medical training, the longest of such academic affiliation in the VA system.

“The VA system has been involved in the training of two thirds of the physicians in the United States and the partnership between Jesse Brown and Northwestern is where this all began,” said Sarah Unterman, MD, Chief of Staff at  Jesse Brown VA Medical Center. “Dwayne’s experience and the collaboration between our VA clinicians and the Northwestern Medicine teams exemplifies the value that these partnerships bring to our veterans and to the physicians who are so privileged to care for them.”

Dr. Chuzi credits her medical training at Jesse Brown as the inspiration for wanting to dedicate her career to caring for veterans.

“The VA has always had a special place in my heart. Mainly because of the patients, the veterans,” said Dr. Chuzi, who has veterans in her family. “They are so resilient and strong, and they have served our country. They are incredibly deserving of good care.”

The veteran patient population faces many health care challenges due to social determinants of health, such as lack of access to transportation, neighborhood crime, financial insecurity, and housing instability, which can have a negative impact on their health. They are also a patient population with high rates of risk factors for heart failure such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity.

“Heart failure in general is extremely burdensome to the population at large, but especially to our veterans because these risk factors for heart failure are so prevalent,” said Dr. Chuzi. “This is a population where there is a ton of advanced disease, but if you don’t have someone necessarily who is specifically trained in looking for patients with this disease, you might not find it. We’re hopeful that our program will help more veterans get the advanced treatments they need.”

In less than a year, more than 10 patients have been referred to Northwestern Medicine from the Jesse Brown VA for advanced heart failure surgical therapies, with eight patients receiving LVADs in just six months.

While Patterson faced some initial challenges adapting to life with his new heart, today he is feeling better than he has in years. He has since retired from the postal service and enjoying time reconnecting with his friends and family in the Chicago area. His heart donor and their family are never far from his mind.

“Like my sister says, someone died for you to live. So, I always had to keep that in the back of my mind,” said Patterson. “I would just say thank you for this blessing. I have a second chance at life now.”

CBC-HITES is one of 13 hubs that are now part of The National Institutes of Health’s Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hub (REAC Hub) program. The new hub will be funded by a $10.4 million investment, including $6 million in support from the Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust, a $4 million grant awarded by The National Institutes of Health, and $400,000 by the Walder Foundation. In partnership with 27 industry, venture capital and community organizations, CBC-HITES will accelerate the discoveries of medical scientists from nine Chicago institutions:

• Northwestern University
• The University of Chicago
• The University of Illinois Chicago
• The Discovery Partners Institute
• Illinois Institute of Technology
• Loyola University Chicago
• Northern Illinois University
• Rosalind Franklin University
• Rush University

CBC-HITES leverages talent, methodologies, networks and infrastructure developed by the Chicago Biomedical Consortium (CBC), a research consortium between Northwestern, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois Chicago, funded by the Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust.

“Building on infrastructure developed by the CBC, the new REAC hub connects Chicago medical scientists with the expertise and network they need to develop their ideas into biotech applications,” said Satish Nadig, MD, PhD, director of the Comprehensive Transplant Center at Northwestern Medicine. “The goal is to get innovative treatments from discovery to patient delivery faster, and we needed a way to teach medical inventors about that process. We’re helping patients and expanding the Chicago-based life sciences ecosystem at the same time through this unprecedented collaborative effort.”

While Chicagoland universities took in $5.8 billion in NIH funding between 2017 and 2022, and Northwestern University research funding topped $1 billion in fiscal year 2022, Chicagoland biotech companies do not receive the same level of private venture capital funding as their coastal counterparts, according to numbers from the CBC. By helping innovators move past the dreaded “valley of death,” CBC-HITES will help attract more professional capital.

“Chicago is rich with medical innovators, and they need seed funding, guidance from expert networks, and input from venture capital,” said Michelle Hoffmann, PhD, executive director at the Chicago Biomedical Consortium. “Advancing methods we developed in the CBC, CBC-HITES will organize a professional venture board, project management, as well as clinical, industry, and community partners. We will use federal resources provided through the REACH program, including access to FDA and CMS experts, we will help move scientific discoveries from the university toward commercialization, eventually building businesses here in Chicago.”

CBC-HITES will also expand on the CBC’s entrepreneurial fellow program that trains Midwestern junior scientific talent to commercialize early inventions in exchange for a pledge to work in the Chicagoland ecosystem after the fellowship.

“Through CBC-HITES, we’re training young scientific talent who will continue to serve the community,” Hoffmann said.

The Chicago Biomedical Consortium was launched in 2006 with an annual grant award from the Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust. To date, more than $76 million has been invested into CBC initiatives to promote Chicago’s biomedical community, resulting in more than 323 awards granted, over 2,715 research papers published, six national research centers established and over $920 million dedicated to research funding. Learn more about the CBC at https://chicagobiomedicalconsortium.org/.

The Walder Foundation was established by Joseph and Elizabeth Walder to address critical issues impacting our world. The Foundation’s five areas of focus—science innovation, environmental sustainability, the performing arts, migration and immigrant communities, and Jewish life—are an extension of the Walders’ lifelong passions, interests, and their personal and professional experiences. Learn more about the Walder Foundation at https://www.walderfoundation.org/.

To learn more about Northwestern Medicine, visit http://news.nm.org/about-northwestern-medicine.html.

Dr. Simpson joined Northwestern Medicine in 2018. She developed the Northwestern Medicine African American Transplant Access Program (AATAP) to increase equitable access to transplantation and to help patients address cultural concerns and overcome modifiable structural and institutional barriers to receive care they need. With her new role, she will continue to provide clinical leadership over AATAP.

“Dr. Simpson is deeply committed to health equity, and she has long endeavored to address the issues that prevent patients from accessing high-quality care to achieve their highest quality of health,” said Howard Chrisman, MD, president and chief executive officer of Northwestern Memorial HealthCare. “Her background in transplant health equity, as well as her ability to listen and partner with communities and other leaders, will help us reduce barriers and better serve our patients and their families.”

After completing medical school at New York University, Dr. Simpson moved to Boston for a surgical residency through Harvard Medical School and completed her transplant surgery fellowship training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to her clinical focus on liver and kidney transplants and her work as an associate professor of surgery in the Division of Organ Transplantation at Feinberg School of Medicine, Dr. Simpson is the vice chair of faculty development and diversity in the Department of Surgery.

She sits on the board of directors for the National Kidney Foundation of Illinois, and is the past diversity, equity and inclusion adviser for the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS). She chaired the ASTS Boldly Against Racism Task Force and was recently elected to sit on the society’s board of councilors.

“I am beyond proud to be a part of this institution that has called out health equity as a main pillar of its core values," Dr. Simpson said. "Health equity is a space where there is always room for discovery, growth and improvement. It is with humility that I embrace this opportunity to guide Northwestern Medicine’s system-wide approach as we leverage the strengths of our clinicians, administrators, educators and researchers to better serve our communities. We must continue to critically evaluate and address health disparities for all and seek new ways to enhance wellness in all the communities we serve.”

The Northwestern Medicine Organ Transplant Center is now one of the largest transplant centers in the Midwest to use both warm and cold liver perfusion to make more livers available for lifesaving transplants. These advanced technologies improve donor liver quality and enhance the recovery process for patients at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

To perfuse a donor liver, surgeons attach it to a machine that circulates either warm, oxygenated and nutrient-enriched blood or a cold, oxygen-rich solution. The technology helps transplant teams optimize the liver while it is being transported to its recipient.

“Our team has pioneered some of the first clinical trials as this rapidly evolving technology has been introduced in the United States,” said Daniel Borja, MD, a national leader in liver perfusion and a transplant surgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “Northwestern Medicine is among the leading transplant programs that are heavily investing in perfusion technologies because we have seen how patients recover faster and better when their livers have been perfused.”

The need for liver transplants in the United States far exceeds the supply of viable organs. More than 10,000 people are on the waiting list for liver transplants in the United States. In 2020, three patients died each day waiting for liver transplants. In the first six months of 2023, about half of the people who needed livers were able to receive them, according to the Organ Procurement & Transplantation Network.

“We are already the most experienced cold liver perfusion team in Illinois, and now that we are introducing warm perfusion, more patients will benefit,” Dr. Borja said. “They choose Northwestern Medicine for transplant care because they know we will do all we can to improve their health. When you’re suffering from liver failure, you want a team that will use the latest research and technology to make a healthier life possible.”

During warm (normothermic) perfusion, surgeons attach the donor liver to a machine that pumps warm, oxygenated and nutrient-enriched blood through the organ. While the liver is on the pump, the team assesses its function to ensure it is ideal for transplantation. This is especially important when the donor liver is classified as “marginal” or considered suboptimal for transplantation due to various criteria. While many transplant centers are forced to discard these organs, Northwestern Medicine’s team carefully evaluates them and is often able to find an appropriate patient match, thanks to perfusion technologies.

“Our team already has short liver waitlist times and low waitlist mortality rates, and warm perfusion will enable us to transplant even more patients, faster,” said Zachary Dietch, MD, transplant surgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “Now we’re able to expand our program because we can travel farther to procure a liver, place it on the pump and monitor its performance as we travel back to Chicago.”

A Northwestern Memorial Hospital team led by Dr. Borja is also part of a clinical trial using cold (hypothermic) perfusion to preserve livers for transplantation. For the study, surgeons attach the liver to a precision-controlled pump that circulates a chilled, oxygen-rich solution into the hepatic artery and portal vein. The liver’s mitochondria have a chance to repair as the solution circulates and the organ rests.

“The solution helps preserve and repair the liver so that by the time we place it in the patient, it is ready to work faster and starts working better,” Dr. Borja said. “So far, patients who have received perfused livers seem to be recovering faster and better than patients who received similar livers without machine perfusion.”

Dr. Borja said the team will continue to monitor patient outcomes for the FDA-approved warm perfusion and the cold perfusion clinical trial. Each patient will have a personalized treatment plan to achieve the best-possible results.

The heart, lung and kidney transplant teams at Northwestern Memorial Hospital also use warm perfusion technologies to preserve and assess organs. As the demand for organ transplantation grows, Northwestern Medicine continues to develop new ways to expand the pool of viable donor organs.

“The same diseases that are damaging the organs of our recipients are also affecting the donor population,” Dr. Borja said. “Diabetes, obesity, hypertension and other chronic conditions all affect the health of our donors, and we do all we can to make those organs usable for transplantation.”

Transplant surgeon Juan Carlos Caicedo, MD, says every scientific advancement is possible only because individuals and families make the selfless choice to donate organs.

“Organ donation, whether from a living donor or a deceased donor, is the greatest gift a person can receive,” Dr. Caicedo said. “We honor donors when we make more organs viable for transplantation. Research and innovation are helping our team maximize the possibilities.”

Surgeons and staff at Northwestern Memorial Hospital have performed their 2,500^th liver transplant surgery, becoming the first health system in Illinois to reach this milestone. The hospital performed its first liver transplant surgery in 1993 and has since become a destination for lifesaving liver care.

“We celebrate every life that has been saved because of our team’s dedication to exceptional patient care,” said Juan Carlos Caicedo, MD, surgical director of liver transplantation at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “Transplant surgeries change the lives of patients, their families and their communities. As physicians, nurses, social workers and staff, we are fulfilled by this work and celebrate the gift of life. We are also thankful to the real heroes of transplant surgery, the patients and family members who choose to donate their organs to save the lives of others.”

Northwestern Medicine is home to the largest organ transplant and living donor organ transplant programs in Illinois. It was the first to offer programs that focus on the unique needs of Hispanic and African American patients, and continues to have the largest such programs. It is home to more than 90 current clinical trials related to transplant and receives $8 million in federal funding for transplant research. As a result of this advanced approach, the team can transplant marginal livers that other transplant centers may have to reject.

“We are able to optimize organs through perfusion and surgical techniques to make them appropriate for patients who would be otherwise unlikely to receive transplants,” Dr. Caicedo said. “This makes even more organs available to the many patients who are on the waiting list.”

The liver transplant program’s capabilities extend to patients in Chicago’s suburbs, downstate Illinois and in Indiana. Transplant hepatologists from Northwestern Memorial Hospital travel to 17 satellite clinics so patients can receive care closer to home.

“More than 77 percent of patients who receive liver transplants at Northwestern Memorial Hospital come from ZIP codes outside of Chicago,”  said Laura Kulik, MD, clinical practice director of hepatology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “About a quarter of them are hospitalized at the time of their liver transplants, but the vast majority require frequent outpatient visits for physician appointments and laboratory testing. We partner closely with primary care physicians, gastroenterologists and community hepatologists to coordinate each patient’s care and create personalized plans.”  

A new inpatient unit at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital provides highly specialized pre- and post-transplant care to patients who need liver transplants and want to stay closer to home.

“Many patients who are waiting for liver transplants live unpredictable lives because of the seriousness of their disease,” said Sean Koppe, MD, network director of transplant hepatology at Northwestern Medicine. “By extending our inpatient services to the suburbs, we hope to keep patients closer to home while they wait for their lifesaving surgeries.”

Dr. Caicedo said the 2,500^th liver transplant milestone was made possible by innovation, collaboration and a shared commitment to leading-edge patient care.

“We are thankful to every organ donor and their family, and to each member of the team that has referred patients, performed research, coordinated transplants and provided bedside care to the people we serve,” Dr. Caicedo said. “Our support staff has helped create a culture of compassion that defines our team. We encourage each other to do more, celebrate every win and never forget the beauty of sending a patient home with a healthy new liver. It is an honor to care for these patients every day.”

“Physicians from Northwestern Memorial Hospital travel to 17 satellite clinics throughout the suburbs and downstate Illinois to treat thousands of patients with liver disease,” said Justin Boike, MD, a hepatologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “We knew from experience that it can be difficult for patients to travel to the many medical appointments that are required before and after a liver transplant.”

The expanded inpatient services will complement the advanced liver care that is already offered at outpatient Northwestern Medicine locations throughout the suburbs, said Ken Hedley, president at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital.

“Our hospital has always been recognized for providing high-quality care, and we’ve seen an increased demand for a higher level of inpatient liver disease treatment,” Hedley said. “Now, patients will be able to access all the care they need without traveling into the city for anything other than the actual surgery.”

More than 77 percent of patients who receive liver transplants at Northwestern Memorial Hospital come from ZIP codes outside of Chicago. About a quarter of them are hospitalized at the time of their liver transplants, but the vast majority require frequent outpatient visits for physician appointments and laboratory testing.

“Many patients who are waiting for liver transplants live unpredictable lives because of the seriousness of their disease,” said Sean Koppe, MD, network director of transplant hepatology at Northwestern Medicine. “By extending our inpatient services to the suburbs, we hope to keep patients closer to home while they wait for their lifesaving surgeries.”

The liver transplant team at Northwestern Memorial Hospital partnered closely with the team at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital to add the highly specialized care that is required for patients awaiting liver transplantation. In addition to expanded testing and screening capabilities, the team dedicated an inpatient nursing unit to patients with liver disease and an outpatient clinic was opened for physician appointments. Transplant hepatologists and transplant surgeons from Northwestern Memorial Hospital have joined the medical staff at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital to provide inpatient care to patients with liver disease.

“Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital is now providing the same level of inpatient transplant care that we have always offered in Chicago,” Dr. Boike said. “In the past, some of these patients already received care at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital, but they were spread throughout the building based on the severity of their illnesses. Now, they will receive care on a dedicated nursing unit where the staff specializes in the treatment of patients with liver disease.”

In the past, hepatologists have been disappointed to hear patients have declined further treatment because they lack access to transportation or because they do not want to travel into the city for care.

“We hope that by bringing this care closer to home, patients will be diagnosed and treated earlier in the disease process and before they become very ill,” Koppe said. “We want our patients to spend more time with their families and friends and less time traveling for medical care.”

Physicians and staff members at both hospitals collaborated to ensure patients receive seamless care no matter which location they choose, said Satish Nadig, MD, PhD, chief of the division of abdominal organ transplantation and the director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Transplant Center.

“Our goal at Northwestern Medicine Transplant is to be patient-centric with every decision we make,” Dr. Nadig said. “To that end, expansion of our liver program to Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital allows us to provide our world-class transplant care closer to where our patients live and work.”

John Pandolfino, MD, chief of the division of gastroenterology and hepatology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said the expanded program is a result of the close relationships between patients and their physicians.

“For several years, our hepatologists have asked patients how we could better meet their needs as they deal with chronic liver disease,” Dr. Pandolfino said. “They told us they want to receive care at a hospital that provides trusted, high-quality services. It is our privilege and honor to partner with the team at Central DuPage Hospital to provide top-notch liver care to our patients.”

Expo presenters, including representatives from multiple Chicago health systems, will offer information about the social determinants of health – the conditions in which people are born, live and work that contribute to their overall well-being.

“Few people fully understand the non-medical factors that influence their health,” said Dinee Simpson, MD, transplant surgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and director of the African American Transplant Access Program. “Data show that a patient’s socioeconomic status, education, neighborhood, employment and access to health care can have a significant impact on one’s health, sometimes even more than genetics.”

The expo is being supported in part by a Northwestern University Racial Equity grant that Dr. Simpson received in partnership with the Endeleo Institute and the National Kidney Foundation of Illinois.  

“We’re addressing kidney disease by educating community members about its causes and treatments,” Dr. Simpson said. “We’re teaching people about how their diets affect their long-term health and impact kidney health. And we’re helping people understand the role they play in keeping each other healthy by providing each other social support and meaningful personal connections.”

One in three American adults is at risk for kidney disease, and people who are Black, Hispanic, Asian American, Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaska Native may be at an increased risk. Jacqueline Burgess-Bishop, FACHE, chief executive officer of National Kidney Foundation of Illinois, said health disparities and inequities contribute to minority populations having higher rates of high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and heart disease, all of which increase the risk for kidney disease.

“Black or African Americans are more than three times as likely and Hispanics or Latinos are 1.3 times more likely to have kidney failure compared to white Americans,” Burgess-Bishop said. “The key is to find kidney disease as early as possible and understand its risk factors before the trouble starts. Regular testing for everyone is important and is even more important for people who are at risk.”

The Endeleo Institute serves Washington Heights and its surrounding communities to improve health, education and economic outcomes so people live longer, healthier lives. The Rev. Rochelle Michael said the expo will give community members access to leaders in health care from throughout Chicago.

“A person’s health is closely linked to the health of their community, and we’ve invited healthcare leaders to share their knowledge with people who attend the expo,” Michael said. “We’ll be offering cardio drumming as a fun way to exercise, and panelists will discuss nutrition and medical specialties. It’s going to be a special event.”

The expo will celebrate the role that mothers and families play in the community’s overall health.

“We’re empowering people to learn more about their health so they can help their friends, family members and neighbors,” Burgess-Bishop said. “Education and prevention can reduce the devastating effects of kidney disease in our communities.”

To learn more about community initiatives at Northwestern Medicine, visit https://www.nm.org/about-us/community-initiatives.

When Kathy Fiandaca and Daniel Ganger, MD, met nearly 35 years ago, she was a single mom who had been told her liver would fail by the time she was 30. He was a young transplant hepatologist who looked her in the eye as she shared her worst fear, that her baby girl would grow up without a mother. From the start, Dr. Ganger listened to his patient, but there was no arguing with him when it came to her future. She’d get a new liver, she’d be healthy, and she’d watch her daughter grow into adulthood.

The path to getting a new liver was rough. Today, at 58, Fiandaca still remembers the worst moments before she received her transplant, when autoimmune hepatitis and primary biliary cirrhosis had ravaged her liver. The surgeries, the medications, the times when she was too weak to care for her child. But more than anything, she remembers Dr. Ganger looking her in the eye and pushing her to go on.

“He just took me under his wing, and if it wasn't for him, I probably wouldn't have fought as hard as I did,” Fiandaca, a Midlothian, Ill. resident, said. “He made me feel like life was worth living. He was also concerned about my daughter, since I was a single parent. Six weeks later, I got the call that they had a liver for me.”

More than 30 years after that, Dr. Ganger continues to provide Fiandaca’s transplant hepatology care. There is an ease in their relationship, a familiarity that has grown through decades of their patient-physician partnership. Dr. Ganger says he doesn’t want praise for doing his job, but patients like Fiandaca are why he’s still a full-time transplant hepatologist at 71 years old.

“A lot of people say, ‘I owe you my life, but of course not.’” Dr. Ganger said. “They owe their lives to a team of people who work with them, and they owe themselves because they've done the right things since they received their transplants.”

Through the years, Fiandaca often had a companion at her appointments with Dr. Ganger – her daughter, Ashley Barretto. She was just eight years old when her mom received the transplanted liver.

“I think it was a 13-hour surgery,” Barretto said. “We were constantly getting updates, and I remember the nurse who was there for us so many days in a row. They acted as though we were their family, and the nurses were showing me things and answering questions so we didn’t feel afraid to bring her home. My grandma and I learned how to be sterile, and we had to help with mom’s wound care at home. We made such great connections with the nursing staff and the physicians that when I grew up, I wanted to give back.”

Now, at 38, Barretto is a nurse at the Northwestern Medicine Cancer Center in Warrenville, something that makes Fiandaca and Ganger equally proud. She said she models her conversations with patients after the interaction she’s seen between her mom and Dr. Ganger.

“There are so many physicians with great bedside manner, but he’s more than that,” Barretto said. “He takes the time, and he gets to know you as the whole individual. It’s such a banter between Dr. Ganger and my mom, he makes her feel so comfortable. It literally brings me joy because I know she’s in such great hands. He doesn’t give her grief. He just tells her how it is.”

In the 30-plus years since her liver transplant, Fiandaca has never had to be hospitalized for liver-related issues. She and Dr. Ganger have worked together to manage her health through life changes and through a scary experience with COVID-19.

“He trusts me like I trust him,” Fiandaca said. “He says I know my body, so if I say something is wrong, he knows it’s wrong. I trust him with my life. I know if I got into any situation, he’d be there to get me through it. I couldn’t have done it without him. He is the best.”

Dr. Ganger said patients like Fiandaca have benefited from the transition from protocol-based care to precision medicine, which focuses on individualized care. He is excited about latest developments in transplant care that will help patients live better with fewer medications.

“I love those meetings with longtime patients, and I love seeing Kathy well,” Dr. Ganger said. “She’s the story of how people can live with a liver transplant for a long time.”

As he looks back on his more than 40-year career as a transplant hepatologist, Dr. Ganger remembers the personal details that patients have shared with him through the years. He continues to love the science of medicine and measures his success in the memories his patients can make as a result of their care at Northwestern Medicine.

“I don’t have a Nobel Prize, but that’s OK. I have Kathy and so many other patients. These have been relationships that have fueled a healer’s dream.”

CHICAGO – April 6, 2023 – Every day as a nephrologist at Northwestern Medicine, Aleksandra Gmurczyk, MD, sees patients who are suffering from kidney failure. She encourages them to take their medications as prescribed, go to all their dialysis appointments and to consider the possibility of a kidney transplant so they can live healthier, longer lives.

As a physician who also serves patients at Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, she often speaks with veterans who would rather stay on dialysis than undergo organ transplantation. Many of her patients distrust the medical system, and some can’t be convinced that a kidney transplant could transform their health. Several years ago, she began to consider how she could change her patients’ opinions if she donated one of her own kidneys to someone in need.

“I wanted to help someone,” Dr. Gmurczyk, 46, said. “I know people can live healthy lives with one kidney, and I know the high need for living donor organs. I hoped by donating my kidney I’d help someone, and I also wanted to inspire others to donate.”

Dr. Gmurczyk’s only challenge? Finding the right person to receive her kidney. She thought of all her patients, and realized her colleagues at Northwestern Memorial Hospital would have to help her make the decision.

“It would have been difficult to choose one person and I couldn’t choose one,” Dr. Gmurczyk said. “I decided to put my donation into a pool and hoped it would help more than one person.”

On Feb. 16, 2023, Dr. Gmurczyk kicked off a kidney paired donation, which occurs when patients have people who are willing to donate their kidneys, but they aren’t good matches with their designated recipients. Instead, the donors swap recipients, and give their kidneys to patients who are a better match. Dr. Gmurczyk donated her kidney to a hard-to-match Virginia patient she had never met, and that patient’s husband donated his kidney to a Northwestern Medicine patient in Chicago.

“It’s the transplant world’s version of the perfect ‘domino effect,’” said John Friedewald, MD, medical director of kidney and pancreas transplantation at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “As a nephrologist, Dr. Gmurczyk understands the benefits and risks of becoming a living organ donor, and every day she sees patients who need kidneys. Our entire team was humbled to support her as she went through this process. We weren’t surprised that she chose to give the gift of life, but we were all moved by this experience.”

Living donor kidneys can function for about twice as long as deceased donor kidneys. Kidneys from living donors are also more likely to function right away, helping recipients recover more quickly.

Dr. Gmurczyk has chronicled her journey on social media and raised awareness about living kidney donation by sharing the facts with her followers.

“I see how hard life can be for patients on dialysis,” Dr. Gmurczyk said. “It’s like a part-time job with appointments that are three times a week and four hours per session. They can’t travel, go overseas and it can be tough for them to work. It’s heartbreaking.”

Art Reyes of Chicago knows firsthand how lifechanging a kidney failure diagnosis can be. After diabetes caused irreversible kidney damage, he began dialysis to remove waste products from his blood in November 2021. Prior to his illness, he and his wife enjoyed spending time with their many nephews and nieces. Dialysis forced him to focus more on his health and his next medical appointments, and it stole precious time from his family.

“It was very depressing, and you kind of lose hope,” Reyes, 51, said. “You hear all the statistics, and that it can take up to eight or 10 years to get a deceased donor. After we found out my family members weren’t a good match for me, I was thinking I should just enjoy the time I had left.”

Then, Reyes received a shocking call: if he was willing to receive an anonymous donor kidney, he could have surgery in two weeks.

“I was counting the days until surgery,” he said. “I knew the donor could back out at any time, and then the dream would be over.”

But what Reyes didn’t know was that Dr. Gmurczyk was committed to her donation. She prepared for surgery and then began the typical donor journey. She had a short hospital stay after the donation and didn’t know she’d helped more than one patient until weeks after surgery.

“It was exactly what I’d hoped for, and my recovery was exactly what we tell donors to expect,” Dr. Gmurczyk said. “I even walked home after my surgery. I returned to work two weeks after I donated and was just a little tired each night after work. I’m so glad I made the decision to donate, and I encourage others to explore the process. It’s much easier than you think.”

Dr. Gmurczyk may have already inspired one of her patients to get a kidney transplant. For years, she had been trying to convince the patient to consider the surgery, and following her donation, the patient decided to start the evaluation process.

Currently 90,000 people in the United States are waiting for a kidney donation and 85 percent of patients waiting for organ donation are waiting for a kidney, according to Donate Life America. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates more 1 in 7 adults in the United States have chronic kidney disease.

“If you are a healthy adult and you think you may be an eligible kidney donor, I encourage you explore the possibility,” Dr. Gmurczyk said. “All of my appointments prior to donation were done in one day, and I only needed a short amount of down time after my surgery. I feel like I benefited as much as the recipients, because I know how much my decision to donate will help improve their lives.”

People who are interested in becoming kidney donors can visit nmlivingdonor.org.

The Northwestern Medicine Organ Transplant Center is a leader in research, innovation and patient care in the Midwest. The team spans the spectrum of basic science, translational and clinical research, and offers novel approaches to immunosuppression, including human clinical trials in immune tolerance, state-of-the-art genomic and proteomic immune monitoring, and health services and outcomes research.

CHICAGO, Ill. – Jan. 30, 2023 – New data confirms Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s standing among the top abdominal organ transplant programs in the country. Based on one-year survival, information released by the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients ranks the hospital’s kidney-pancreas transplant program as a 5-Tier Program and ranks its liver and kidney transplant programs as 4 tiers. Northwestern Memorial Hospital is the only transplant center in Illinois to achieve 5 tiers for kidney-pancreas transplants and 4 tiers for liver transplants. SRTR uses the tier system to make it easier for patients to understand and compare the outcomes of transplant programs. The highest-possible score is 5, which indicates likely better performance.

In 2022 and according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, Northwestern Memorial Hospital completed 332 kidney transplants, the most in the program’s history. The team completed 107 liver transplants and 24 pancreas transplants, saving the lives of hundreds of patients.

“Patients trust us to provide innovative, lifesaving care, and we never lose sight of that privilege,” said Satish Nadig, MD, PhD, director of the Comprehensive Transplant Center at Northwestern Medicine. “Our transplant program combines groundbreaking science with the best of humanity, and we push the boundaries of medicine to serve patients from Illinois and from around the world.”

On Jan. 5, SRTR released its semiannual report, which showed Northwestern Memorial Hospital was the only 4-Tier program for liver transplant in Illinois and was the highest-volume liver transplant center.  The program achieved the highest tier for getting a deceased donor transplant faster, which has the largest impact on patient survival after they are put on the waitlist for a donor liver.

Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s kidney-pancreas transplant program was the only program in the state to achieve Tier-5 for one-year organ survival. The hospital’s kidney transplant program was the highest volume in the state and is one of four in Illinois to achieve Tier-4 for one-year kidney transplant survival.

“Every member of our transplant team contributes to our superior patient outcomes, from those of us who provide direct patient care to our world-class researchers and administrative colleagues,” Dr. Nadig said. “We can care for the sickest patients and use more donor organs because of our team’s exceptional capabilities. It’s always special when independent data reflects our abilities to serve patients.”

In addition to abdominal organ transplants, Northwestern Memorial Hospital performs heart and lung transplants. It is home to the African American Transplant Access Program and the Hispanic Transplant Program, which are dedicated to improving transplant access and providing culturally congruent care. Other Northwestern Memorial Hospital programs also transplant additional organs or tissues, including corneas, skin, muscle, nerves, blood vessels, connective tissues and bone.

“Every patient deserves state-of-the-art transplant care, and that motivates us to expand the boundaries of medicine through research and innovation,” Dr. Nadig said. “We are also tremendously moved by the living and deceased donor donations we see each day. The decision of one person or family to donate organs and save another is awe-inspiring and unforgettable.”

Chicago, IL – Northwestern Medicine surgeons have successfully performed the health system’s first successful combined lung-liver transplant. The patient, 63-year-old Patricio Collera of Vernon Hills, Ill., is a retired nurse who worked at Northwestern Memorial Hospital for several years before being diagnosed with interstitial lung disease and nonalcoholic liver disease, which caused scarring of the lungs and liver cirrhosis. Less than 10 days after being added to the waitlist for new organs, Collera received the call on Aug. 24 that a new lung and liver were available. Thanksgiving Day marks three months since Collera received the lifechanging news, and he’s grateful to those who helped give him a second chance at life.   

“Without my transplant team and donor, I wouldn’t be here today,” said Collera. “Being the first Northwestern Medicine patient to successfully receive a combined lung-liver transplant will be my legacy, and it’s even more special receiving my new organs at the same place where I once worked as a nurse.”

Born in the Philippines, Collera trained to become a nurse and moved to the United States in 1988 with his family. For 25 years, he worked as a PICC line nurse, including two years at Northwestern Memorial, where he inserted catheters into veins for medications, fluids, nutrition and blood transfusions. In 2017, Collera developed a terrible cough, and by 2019 his breathing was so bad that he relied on supportive oxygen 24/7 and had to stop working.

“My life was miserable. I had to drag 50 feet of tubing and oxygen tanks with me everywhere I went. One tank would only last 30 minutes, so I’d have to bring two tanks with me to the grocery store,” said Collera.  

In February 2022, Collera was evaluated for a lung transplant, and testing showed his liver was fibrosed by 75 percent. This meant, Collera would also need a liver transplant to withstand the transplant medications he’d be on for the rest of his life.

“I immediately sent messages across the country to top-tier transplant centers and was informed that a lung-liver transplant wasn’t possible due to my age or their team’s lack of experience. One doctor told me, ‘Don’t do it – you’re going to die,’” said Collera. “But when I turned to Northwestern Medicine, I started crying tears of relief when they said, ‘Yes – we can do it.’”  

Collera was listed for a double-lung and liver transplant on Aug. 15, and by Aug. 24 he received the call that a single-lung and liver were available. Even though he was listed for a double-lung transplant, the team encouraged him to take the organs.

“A lung-liver transplant procedure is very rare. To date in the United States, only ten have been performed in 2022,” said Rade Tomic, MD, pulmonologist and medical director of the Northwestern Medicine Lung Transplant Program. “Patricio was in desperate need of a lung, and we didn’t have much time to keep waiting for a double-lung transplant. The outcomes of a single-lung transplant versus a double-lung transplant are very similar, so we decided to proceed with one lung because it was an excellent match.”

Once Collera was in the operating room, surgeons were in a race against the clock.

“With two different organs, you have to work twice as fast. You can’t start the second transplant until the first is completed and perfect. There’s zero margin of error. Many people are working closely to make this a success: lung team, liver team, anesthesiologists, nurses, perfusionists, donor team, etc. It’s an elegant and closely coordinated dance,” said Ankit Bharat, MD, chief of thoracic surgery at Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute. “Patricio’s lung transplant was the fastest one I’ve ever done in my career, and the new lung is working great. In fact, his old left lung, new right lung and new liver are all very happy together.”

“Transplant is the ultimate team sport, and honestly, it’s one of the only fields I can think of that depends on humanity. Somebody has to give up their organs, either in life or in passing, to save someone else – often, someone they don’t know,” said Satish Nadig, MD, PhD, chief of organ transplantation at Northwestern Medicine. “With all the things happening in the world, it’s not only amazing to be able to replace someone’s lung and liver and they go on to live a normal life, but to also know we’re honoring the gift that someone has given up themselves.”

This Thanksgiving, Collera is looking forward to spending quality time with his wife, Evelyn, their children and grandkids. He’s now on a mission to share his story and bring hope to other patients.

“Look at me! No supportive oxygen and I’m free of tubing,” said Collera. “Because of Northwestern Medicine and my donor, I’m home for the holidays and doing well. I will not waste this lung and liver. I will live a good life and do something meaningful with it. Thank you from the bottom of my heart – you let me live.”

For more information about Northwestern Medicine’s lung and liver transplant programs, visit nm.org.

“I heard you’re a Cubs fan, but how does it feel to be part White Sox fan now,” Staehlin asked, while the room filled with groans from both families.

Droszcz laughed through grateful tears as they learned more about each other and the remarkable gift that brought them together.

Droszcz, a 52-year-old father of three from Tinley Park, Illinois, was diagnosed with advanced liver cancer in April 2021. After assessing his body’s response over time to radioembolization, surgery and systemic biological oral therapy, he was deemed healthy enough to be put on the waiting list for a donor liver. When none of his family members matched as his donor, Droszcz’s family used social media and traditional fliers to try and improve his chances of finding a willing donor.

Frankfort, Illinois resident Sarah Staehlin saw the social media posts several times and realized her 35-year-old husband met the basic liver donor criteria. She mentioned Droszcz’s story, and within weeks, Staehlin was being tested as a potential donor.

“It was a simple decision,” Chris Staehlin said. “He has three kids, and I have two. Kids need their dad. I realized that I could help him have more time with his family.”

On Aug. 24, still strangers, both men underwent surgery. Two days later, Staehlin was already walking five miles in the hospital halls. Droszcz’s recovery would take longer, but his medical team was celebrating with him after his successful surgery.

“Living donor organs are the highest quality we can provide because they are coming from a healthy donor, immediately implanted into the recipient and they start working for the patient right away,” said Juan Carlos Caicedo, MD, a transplant surgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “An altruistic donation, when the donor has never even met the patient, is not something we often get to do. It is tremendously moving to have the donor join our efforts to save a patient’s life.”

During a living donor liver transplant, surgeons remove part of the donor’s healthy liver and place it into the recipient. Within 12 weeks, most donor livers will regenerate and return to normal size.

“Living liver donors are a great blessing because they provide a liver graft when it is the right time for the recipient to receive a liver transplant,” Dr. Caicedo said. “It is a tragedy to see patients dying while they are waiting for a liver from a deceased donor. There are not advantages waiting for a deceased donor, there are only risks. Patients who receive organ donations from living donors typically have great outcomes.”

Justin Boike, MD, a hepatologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said he and his colleagues were thrilled to see Droszcz receive a second chance at life because of Staehlin’s gift.

“Dan has been a fighter every step of the way,” Boike said. “He remained positive at the early point in his diagnosis and treatment and has remained proactive with his care. He is also a family man and thrives on the support of his amazing family. Liver transplant can be a definitive cure for liver cancer with the lowest risk for liver cancer recurrence, compared to other treatment options. His new transplanted liver graft will likely last him his lifetime, as liver transplants can function for the entire life of the patient.”

Nearly 6,000 people received liver donations in 2022, however less than six percent of those were from living donors. There are currently more than 11,000 people on the U.S. waiting list for liver donation. Each year, about 16 percent of people on the waiting list die while awaiting transplant.

“It took a multidisciplinary liver tumor program team to treat Dan’s cancer because initially he was not eligible for transplant. Our transplant and hepatobiliary surgeons, hepatologists, oncologists, interventional radiologists and nurses worked for almost a year to make Dan eligible to receive this transplant. This was not an easy task.” Caicedo said. “Beyond surgery, we also used specialized therapies to inhibit the cancer’s growth and to prepare him for surgery. It’s that combination of innovative medicine and selfless organ donation that have made his experience so special.”

Staehlin and Droszcz clasped hands as they sat together in the hospital and shared surgery stories. Family members alternated between crying, laughing and hugging as the men established a banter that was part fun, part heartfelt.

“How's my liver treating you?” Staehlin asked.

“It’s treating me good,” Droszcz said. “I love you, man. You're family now.”

“I now call myself ‘Colette 2.0’ – new and improved. I have a second chance at life,” said Hurd.

In May 2020, Hurd noticed she was short of breath, but it wasn’t COVID-19. She was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension (PH), which refers to high blood pressure in the lungs. PH is a rare disease that affects the blood vessels in the lungs and the right side of the heart. It causes the heart and lungs to weaken over time, which ultimately leads to death. 

By May 2021, Hurd’s lungs were failing, and she was admitted to Northwestern Memorial for consideration of a double-lung transplant. Due to Hurd’s heart failing on the right side, it caused poor kidney perfusion, which meant – Hurd also needed a kidney transplant. 

On July 7, 2021, Hurd was listed for a lung and kidney transplant, but it was difficult to find a match. 

Hurd was highly sensitized – meaning, she had developed a lot of antibodies in her bloodstream. This can happen during childbirth or through previous blood transfusions. Bottom line, these antibodies would reject new organs in Hurd’s body. 

 So, the transplant team took a chance. 

 On May 15, 2022, they accepted organs that were not the right match and created a protocol to get rid of the antibodies in Hurd’s bloodstream to make her a good match. 

They wiped Hurd’s immune system so she wouldn’t reject the new organs. This was achieved through medications and plasmapheresis treatment before and after surgery, which involves removing blood through a catheter and circulating it in a machine to remove the antibodies. Hurd was the first Northwestern Medicine lung transplant patient to receive this treatment. To date, it’s now been performed on five more Northwestern Medicine lung transplant patients. 

“Colette has opened the door for many more patients across the country who would otherwise die while waiting for a lung transplant,” said Rade Tomic, MD, medical director of the Northwestern Medicine Lung Transplant Program. “Until Colette, this type of treatment, where we immediately administer medications and plasmapheresis before and after surgery, was only done in Toronto for lung transplant patients. It’s very uncommon.”

“Transplant is such a young field that we’re still learning what the boundaries are,” said Satish Nadig, MD, PhD, chief of organ transplantation at Northwestern Medicine, who performed Hurd’s kidney transplant. “With Colette’s case, our transplant team was able to push that boundary, immunologically speaking, even further to the benefit of those requiring life-saving organs globally.”

During her 15-month hospitalization, Hurd developed strong relationships with her medical team – especially Kari Brouwer, OTR/L, a Northwestern Medicine occupational therapist, who helped Hurd’s husband, Dennis, surprise his wife with a vow renewal at the hospital chapel for their 20^th wedding anniversary.

“Colette is such a bright light and rubs off on everyone she meets,” said Brouwer. “She wants to support you, remembers your name, renews your hope, and reminds you why you got into health care in the first place. We will never forget her.”

On August 11, hospital staff lined the hallway, cheering Hurd on as she was officially discharged from Northwestern Memorial.  

“This team at Northwestern Medicine never gave up on me. Even though I had so many issues with the antibodies in my blood, they were always thinking outside the box,” said Hurd. “I hope my story encourages others to register as organ donors – especially the African American community. I’ve been a registered donor since I first got my driver’s license, and we need more African Americans to sign up as donors. It will help someone else – just like somebody helped me.”