“I too have a new heart” – breaking latest news

In recent weeks the NYU Langone Health School of Medicine and Transplant team in New York has moved to
Ukraine in the largest transplant center in the war-torn country. Their leader wanted it strongly, Robert Montgomery; they had courage, it was necessary for the Ukrainians to protect their journey with mobile devices to dodge the missiles, “I realized how dark the night can be,” Montgomery said. In Ukraine the doctors of New York visited over 300 patients in four refugee centers and then successfully completed three kidney and one heart transplants in what remained of the transplant hospital, side by side with their colleagues in Lviv; they have seen devastation and death, they have promised them that they will continue to help them.

Who is

But who is this Robert Montgomery? One of the greatest surgeons in the world, reckless if you like, but certainly brilliant; do you think while traveling from Dallas a Paris a few years ago he happened to be sitting next to Denyce Graves, mezzo soprano, tall, black, beautiful; they talk all the time and as the plane is about to land they have already decided that they will get married. Denyce at just 30 years old had already enchanted the whole world with his Carmen al Metropolitan, a little for the voice, a little for his imposing stage presence. Today she is the “top diva” of her generation, she sings regularly at the National Cathedral of Washington, and it is precisely there that Denyce and Robert get married, with an altogether simple ceremony, few friends, the family – she had two children, Robert already had three children – and to be honest a bit of cameras. But they had already married, so to speak, in a village Masai in Africa with an iron pact: “You come to see me at the opera and one day I will come to your theater (operating theatre, that’s what it says in English) I want to see you operate. ‘ Montgomery sees Denyce in 2007 at the Washington National Opera in Bluebeard’s Castle, after thinking about it a lot, she decides to go to him in the hospital. She sees a transplant from start to finish, but “I’m not sure I’d do it again.”

Celebrity

Montgomery is now a celebrity: he introduced living kidney removal surgery through a laparoscopic procedure, that is, very little invasive compared to traditional surgery (that technique is used by everyone in the world today). He was the first to establish that through a first “altruistic” donor, chains of donations can be set up that make it possible to transplant up to 10 patients. He entered the Guinness World Record for doing the most transplants in one day. As if that were not enough, she was able to remove a donor’s kidney through the vagina, a bit embarrassing to be honest, but it works: there is no need to incise the tissues and it heals immediately. Also he a year ago transplanted the kidney of a genetically modified pig on a man in conditions of brain death; that kidney worked. Robert Montgomery, in short, is one of those people who sees opportunities where others see problems: when you hear “no, this will never work,” he tries.

Heart transplant

But one day it happens that the prince of transplant surgeons needs a heart transplant himself. Possible? Robert Montgomery has a family heart disease that has already led to the death of his father, aged only 52, and his brother, who, when he was just 35, had a cardiac arrest while water skiing. For Bobby it was a trauma, to the point of deciding that he wanted to be a doctor and dedicate himself to the transplant and do what his father was not allowed (then 50 years was too much to have a heart transplant). Robert Montgomery from the age of 29 has been wearing a defibrillator, but there comes a time when the heart surgeon’s heart stops; they revive it, the heart restarts but returns to stop seven more times in the space of a few years, the last one in Italy, in Matera, in the hotel, in September four years ago. At that point it becomes clear that Bobby needs a heart transplant. “Unbelievable – Robert thinks to himself – when I had those guys (his colleagues) come to work with me, I never thought that one day some of them would have my life in their hands”.

The questions

In intensive care waiting for an organ that never arrives, the super surgeon thinks what his patients have always thought about: «How long will I have to stay here before the heart that is right for me arrives?». “How bad it is to realize that there is someone who will have to die in order for me to live again“. Montgomery knows well that the heart does not always arrive in time, if it does not happen, you die. I mean, you must be lucky. What’s more, Montgomery doesn’t want favoritism, but he’s also 1.85 meters tall: for him it takes a big big heart and finding it is not easy. And that’s not enough, his blood is from group 0, a compatible donor is needed, even more difficult. But after a few days of resuscitation his old heart has a little jolt: a breathless doctor enters his room “Bobby, there’s an organ for you, a boy who died of an overdose, they found it with the needle still stuck in the arm “.

Hepatitis C

Then that doctor gets all serious, but there is one thing: that boy had thehepatitis C. But Montgomery doesn’t think about it for a minute: “Very well, I’ll take that heart and we’ll have Nader do the surgery” (Nader Moazami who now leads the heart transplant program set up by Montgomery in Baltimore, ndr). In making this choice, Dr. Montgomery knew that he would fall ill with hepatitis C, that virus is very contagious, and whoever receives an organ from an infected person, in turn, gets sick, so much so that until a few years ago organs of patients with hepatitis C was not used at all. «Better – thinks Robert – maybe that heart would have been discarded, so I don’t take a heart away from those who wait». Not only that, that was the heart of a big boy who died of heroin and he knows that the organs of young people work better than others.

He virus

Five days after surgery, Robert contracts the hepatitis virus. Today, however, there is a drug (very expensive, of course, but also extremely effective) that heals more than 95% of patients, you have to take it every day for eight weeks, and it also gives some trouble, but patience. Bobby looks ahead. Two weeks later he is already in the hospital and after another two he is back in the operating room, not before having spoken to the patient who will operate the next day to tell him, among other things, a wonderful thing: “Now I know perfectly well what you will feel, I have also been through it ‘me two months ago; I was on the other side, on your side, I know the other side of the coin well ».

Convincing work

To convince the sick not to refuse the organs of patients with hepatitis C, Robert now only needs a few words: “You see, sir, you heal from hepatitis C as I did, the risk of dying while waiting for an organ that is a heart , a liver or a lung, is much higher ». As a young man Bobby had been to Africa; “Who knows, maybe it was that experience, he certainly knows how to talk to his patients with incredible sweetness,” say the nurses. Those who have had the patience to read me so far will think that all this is not true, that it is the plot of a film, but in that film there is all the progress of medicine and surgery and the dedication of those who do research to find drugs. new. We are used to antibiotics, but until a few years ago we did not think that there would be pills capable of overcoming even viruses. Now here we are: with the hepatitis C virus,herpesWith the’Hiv and a little bit also with Sars-CoV-2. The viruses that will come will not have an easy time.