Polish Face Transplant Patient Goes Home

A Polish man who received the first emergency, lifesaving face transplant left the hospital and talked to reporters just 11 weeks after the surgery, according to the Associated Press.

"My speech isn't clear, but it's really important that it is there," said the transplant recipient, a 33-year-old Polish man identified only as Grzegorz, who spoke at a news conference in sunglasses to hide a motionless right eyelid. "I know it's still a long way."

His doctors said he can breathe, eat, see, speak and taste.

Patients usually have to wait several years before undergoing face transplant surgery, but after a work accident left Grzegorz mauled and at risk for life-threatening infections earlier this year, doctors needed to act fast.

Grzegorz got a new face three weeks after a stone-cutting machine damaged his face so severely that it couldn't be reattached. His jaw was crushed, and his condition was deteriorating so rapidly that doctors said they had no choice other than to give him a face transplant right away.

"Usually, the recipients have to wait between one and seven years," said Dr. Adam Maciejewski, who headed the team of surgeons at the Cancer Center and Institute of Oncology in Gliwice, which is the only facility in Poland licensed to perform face transplants. "For obvious reasons, we had to act much faster, as we were saving this man's life."

SLIDESHOW: Face Transplants, Then and Now

Earlier this month, Carmen Blandin Tarleton spoke publicly for the first time since her face transplant in February. It came six years after her estranged husband attacked her with lye, blinding her and leaving her disfigured.

Below is a picture of Grzegorz after surgery. Viewer discretion is advised.

Charla Nash, a Connecticut woman who was mauled by a chimpanzee in 2009, got her face transplant surgery in 2011.

Maciejewski said Grzegorz's surgery was the first transplant undertaken to save a patient's life.

The May 15 operation took 27 hours and also included a bone transplant. Grzegorz needed reconstruction of his face, jaws, palate and the bottom of his eye sockets.

He is still at risk for infection but is expected to recover and live a normal life.

Although post-operation photographs show stitches from above his right eye, under his left eye and around his face to the neck, Grzegorz was able to give photographers a thumbs up six days after surgery.

A 33-year-old Polish man whose face was torn off by stone-cutting machinery is shown after undergoing a total face transplant.

You are using an outdated version of Internet Explorer. Please click here to upgrade your browser in order to comment.

View the original article here

Girl Prompts Organ Transplant Policy Review

A family's fight to sidestep a controversial transplant rule and save their 10-year-old daughter has prompted the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network to review its existing policy that pushes children under 12 to the bottom of the adult organ transplant waiting list regardless of their health. The announcement of the OPTN review came as the family of a second child awaiting a lung transplant sued and won an order to avoid the under-12 rule.

OPTN's executive committee meets June 10 to review data – such as waiting times, mortality rates and organ offers, according to a letter from the president of OPTN's board of directors, Dr. John Roberts, to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

They will determine if a new policy is needed.

"If available data suggest that a change to the lung allocation policy is warranted, the executive committee would be able to approve an interim policy change and expedited plan for implementation at that time," Roberts wrote in the letter.

Read about the Murnaghans' battle to save Sarah

Eleven "priority 1" children younger than 12 years old are currently waiting for lung transplants, according to OPTN data compiled on May 24 for ABCNews.com. Nine under-12-year-olds awaiting lung transplants are categorized as "priority 2."

As a result of an emergency court order, 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan now has two records in the official organ transplant database: one with her real birthday and one with a birthday to make the system treat her as a 12-year-old.

Sarah is dying of cystic fibrosis and won a federal court order Wednesday to sidestep the controversial transplant rule that had been preventing her from getting new lungs.

The Murnaghan family of Newtown Square, Pa., had been fighting a little-known organ transplant policy that had been effectively pushing its daughter Sarah to the bottom of the adult transplant waiting list because it mandated that adult lungs be offered to all adult patients before they could be offered to someone younger than 12 years old.

The family filed an emergency motion on Wednesday to prevent Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius from enforcing the policy. Sebelius said Tuesday that she would not make an exception for Sarah.

But on Wednesday afternoon, Federal Judge Michael Baylson ordered Sebelius to stop enforcing the under-12 rule for Sarah "so that she can be considered for receipt of donated lungs from adults based on the medical severity of her condition as compared to the medical severity of persons over 12 in the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network system." The order is effective immediately and will remain in effect unless the court rules otherwise at a preliminary injunction hearing on June 14.

Bioethicist Art Caplan wrote on Wednesday that politicians and bureaucrats shouldn't decide whether Sarah gets lungs because of the medical complexities of her case.

Speaking to ABCNews.com before the judge ruled in Sarah's favor, he said he didn't expect the Murnaghans to win because it would involve challenging the legitimacy of the entire organ transplant system. That is, unless lawyers could make a pure discrimination case. Otherwise, he said the effort was "doomed to fail."

"I don't think they have any other options to get her on the list," Caplan told ABCNews.com Wednesday after the emergency motion was filed but before the judge ruled in Sarah's favor. "Do I begrudge them the right or the effort to try to do what they can? No."

You are using an outdated version of Internet Explorer. Please click here to upgrade your browser in order to comment.

View the original article here

Inside Mayo Clinic Organ Transplant Unit

It was just more than a year ago when we touched down in Rochester, Minn. to do a story on the organ transplant unit at Mayo Clinic. Before we could even check our camera mics, we got word that another plane had just landed carrying a red cooler containing a liver for 60-year-old Gordon Karels.

It's the moment more than 100,000 people in the United States are waiting for. Eighteen of them die each day waiting for their organ transplant, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Watch the full story on "Nightline" tonight at 12:35 a.m. ET.

For some, getting a new, healthy organ can happen overnight. For most, the wait is much longer. Sometimes it can take years.

With the cooler in the doctor's hand, we rushed to the hospital to film its arrival and subsequent journey through the winding corridors to the operating room. After his successful transplant and rapid recovery in the days to follow, Karels and his family celebrated.

Also in the hospital was Jessica Danielson, then 30 years old, who was waiting for a heart and liver. At age 19, Danielson was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy, a rare condition that leads to congestive heart failure and damages the liver.

Web Extra Video: Jessica Danielson Bonds With Woman Who Had Same Condition

Doctors told her that she would either have a heart attack or die from the disease within three years. More than 10 years later, Danielson was still waiting for her double transplant.

Danielson was attached to her IV pump at all times. She had nicknamed it Wilson.

"He's keeping me going," she said last April. "He's pumping medications directly into my heart."

Back then, Danielson said, "I don't think death is in the cards for me, I have way too much to do and I'm doing everything I can to stay strong."

Six weeks later, Danielson finally got a new heart and liver. Her recovery took some months living in Rochester, Minn., at the Gift of Life House, where she had to get used to her new organs.

"I remember the first time I went up an incline in Rochester, and I got to the top of it and teared up," she said. "I'm still in awe of it every day. Carrying the laundry up the stairs -- before it was the hardest thing to do. Now it's just so easy. ... I'm like a normal person now."

"It's a very cool feeling -- hard to explain to someone who has always had a healthy heart -- but it's like magic," Danielson said. "I don't take anything for granted anymore."

Three months after her surgery, Jessica finally went home to Duluth, Minn. "Nightline" caught up with her there last week, shortly after her one-year anniversary of getting her new organs.

Danielson's thicker, curlier hair and healthy coloring made it hard to believe she was the same person we met a year ago in a hospital gown.

Back then, she was pushing her IV pump down the hallway. Last week, she was pushing a shopping cart at the grocery store buying some food for a barbecue with friends.

"I should buy guacamole. It's my favorite thing!" she said.

You are using an outdated version of Internet Explorer. Please click here to upgrade your browser in order to comment.

View the original article here

Life After a Face Transplant

After hiding his face for 15 years, Richard Lee Norris has stepped into the spotlight for a book about the surgery that saved his life.

Norris made headlines in 2012 when he received a full face transplant – the result of a 36-hour operation that swapped his scarred skin and shattered bones with tissue from a donor. Now he's sharing his story in "The Two Faces of Richard," a biography punctuated with never-before-seen black and white photos of his amazing transformation.

"This book shows that it's possible to go through hell and come out on the other side," said Coos Hamburger, a photojournalist and author of the e-book recently released on Amazon.

See pictures of Richard Lee Norris and other face transplant recipients through the years.

The story begins on Sept. 10, 1997, when the Remington 12-gauge pump shotgun Norris was repositioning in a gun cabinet emptied a round in his face.

"Richard's memory of the details was virtually obliterated along with his chin, jaws, mouth, nose and tongue," Coos wrote in his book, describing the horrific accident that landed Norris in a medically-induced coma as doctors raced to save his life and salvage remnants of his face. "He recalls only a vague fog of thoughts tied together like a cobweb as he gradually recovered in the hospital weeks later."

When Norris awoke from a series of surgeries to repair the near-fatal damage, he couldn't believe what he saw.

"The high ballistic shot had removed everything from just at the center of my eyes to the bottom of my chin," Norris recalled in the book. "For the longest time I didn't even want to see what my face looked like. I didn't want to feel it nor even have people see me look that way."

Read about the evolution of face transplants.

Norris said he "fell into a recluse state," admitting in the book he sometimes felt like suicide was "the best option."

"I would always walk with my head held low, my face covered up with a surgical mask, trying to hide from the world," he recalled. "I only shopped at places where I knew the people who worked there or I would go late at night when there were fewer people around."

"The best part of my day was when I was asleep and living in a normal world," he added.

Hamburger met Norris in 2011 while working on a book about shock trauma at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

"I remember him asking why anyone would want to share the most difficult moment of their life," Hamburger said of an early encounter with Norris. "I said every person comes at it from a slightly different perspective, but many people are motivated to share their story so that someone else doesn't have to endure what they did."

Norris, who had "virtually no photographs" of himself from after the accident, agreed to let Hamburger document his struggle amid the looming prospect of a face transplant – a pioneering procedure fraught with risks.

"I remember standing with Richard in the lobby of a hotel, and there was a couple with a young child checking out. The girl peered around the corner just as Rich was in the process of changing his mask, and she was just petrified," Hamburger said. "I could see how much that hurt him. It was really the first time I got a sense of why he'd gotten to the point of considering a transplant with all its risks, including death. Living the way he did, in many ways, was untenable."

You are using an outdated version of Internet Explorer. Please click here to upgrade your browser in order to comment.

View the original article here

Girl Gets Chance at Lung Transplant

In a last-ditch effort to save its 10-year-old daughter who is dying of cystic fibrosis, a Pennsylvania family filed an emergency motion in federal court today to sidestep a controversial transplant rule that was preventing the girl from getting new lungs.

And the family won.

The Murnaghan family of Newtown Square, Pa., had been fighting a little-known organ transplant policy that had been effectively pushing its daughter Sarah to the bottom of the adult transplant waiting list because it mandates that adult lungs be offered to all adult patients before they can be offered to someone younger than 12 years old.

The family filed an emergency motion on Wednesday to prevent Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius from enforcing the policy. Sebelius said Tuesday that she would not make an exception for Sarah.

On Wednesday afternoon, Federal Judge Michael Baylson ordered Sebelius to stop enforcing the under-12 rule for Sarah "so that she can be considered for receipt of donated lungs from adults based on the medical severity of her condition as compared to the medical severity of persons over 12 in the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network system." The order is effective immediately and will remain in effect unless the court rules otherwise at a preliminary injunction hearing on June 14.

The #Sign4Sarah hashtag on Twitter erupted in celebratory tweets shortly after the news broke. Calls and emails from ABCNews.com to Sarah's family and spokespeople were not immediately returned.

"Finally, we have some positive news for Sarah and her family," U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R.-Pa., said in a statement. "I applaud today's ruling and am grateful to Judge Baylson for quickly issuing his decision on such an important matter."

Toomey had written a letter to Sebelius asking her to step in to save Sarah last week.

Law firm Pepper Hamilton LLP wrote a letter to Sebelius on Monday calling the policy "unfair, arbitrary and capricious" and saying that Sebelius' failure to make an exception was a violation of Sarah's constitutional rights to "due process" and "equal protection," according to a family statement.

Sarah's family is asking the public to "consider naming our child an organ recipient should someone lose the life of a loved one in the very near future," they said in the statement.

In a letter sent Friday to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, Sebelius asked for the review to consider changing the policy to make more transplants available to children, The Associated Press reported.

Sebelius called the incongruity between donors and children in need of transplants "especially stark."

"Sarah is being left to die," Sarah's father, Fran Murnaghan, told ABC News on Sunday. "Not only Sarah, but there are many other children in the same situation.

"[Sebelius] clearly has the authority to do something now, and she has decided to do, to be honest, not much of anything," he said. "In my opinion, she has kicked the can down the political road."

There were only 11 lung donors between 6 and 10 years old and only two lung transplants in that age group in 2012, according to an Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network statement.

Patients with cystic fibrosis, a genetic condition that damages the lungs, have an average life expectancy of 31 years old, said Dr. Devang Doshi, a pediatric lung specialist at Beaumont Children's Hospital in Michigan who has not met Sarah. But if they get a lung transplant, the condition is essentially cured.

You are using an outdated version of Internet Explorer. Please click here to upgrade your browser in order to comment.

View the original article here

Lawyers Push for Transplant Rule Exception to Save Girl

Lawyers for 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan, who has been denied a lung transplant because of a controversial federal policy, say Health and Human Services' Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' decision to review the policy -- but not in time to save Sarah -- is unconstitutional.

Sarah would be at the top of the adult lung transplant list if she were 12, because she only has weeks to live and a lung transplant would as-good-as cure her of cystic fibrosis.

Organ Donation: Should Younger Patients Get Better Kidneys?

The Murnaghan family is fighting a little known organ transplant policy that is effectively pushing Sarah to the bottom of the adult transplant waiting list because it mandates that adult lungs be offered to all adult patients before they can be offered to someone under 12 years old.

Law firm Pepper Hamilton LLP wrote a letter to Sebelius on Monday calling the policy "unfair, arbitrary and capricious" and saying that Sebelius's failure to make an exceptionis is a violation of Sarah's constitutional rights to "due process" and "equal protection," according to a family statement.

Sarah's father, Fran Murnaghan, of Newtown Square, Pa., told ABC News Sunday that Sebelius' mandate for review of transplant policies would not deal with current cases in a timely manner, nor deal with what he characterized as an unequal system that discriminates against children younger than 12.

"Sarah is being left to die," Murnaghan said. "Not only Sarah, but there are many other children in the same situation.

"[Sebelius] clearly has the authority to do something now, and she has decided to do, to be honest, not much of anything," he said. "In my opinion, she has kicked the can down the political road."

"Secretary Sebelius' decision to not exercise her very clear authority under the law to intervene and mandate a variance that would help save Sarah's life is devastating," the family said in a prepared statement.

Sarah's family is asking the public to "consider naming our child an organ recipient should someone lose the life of a loved one in the very near future," they said in the statement.

"Our little girl, who loves writing music, making crafts, and playing with her siblings can honor someone's life by living on herself," they wrote.

Under the existing policy, children like Sarah are forced to wait for a lung transplant, despite her life-threatening illness.

In a letter sent Friday to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, Sebelius asked for the review to consider changing the policy to make more transplants available to children, The Associated Press reported.

Sebelius called the incongruity between donors and children in need of transplants "especially stark."

There were only 11 lung donors between 6 and 10 years old and only two lung transplants in that age group in 2012, according to an Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network statement.

Patients with cystic fibrosis, a genetic condition that damages the lungs, have an average life expectancy of 31 years old, said Dr. Devang Doshi, a pediatric lung specialist at Beaumont Children's Hospital in Michigan who has not met Sarah. But if they get a lung transplant, the condition is essentially cured.

You are using an outdated version of Internet Explorer. Please click here to upgrade your browser in order to comment.

View the original article here