Start-up funding came from St. Joseph's Foundation
Larry Stilwell can now not only walk to his truck without getting winded—he walks four miles around his West Valley acreage every night. Elaine van Swinderen no longer has to leave hours early for appointments, pacing herself and lugging an oxygen tank along with her. Joe Nagel doesn’t have to stand in the grocery aisles reading food labels as cover for catching his breath.
Larry, Elaine and Joe are just three of the 34 patients whose lives have been dramatically transformed by St. Joseph’s new Lung Transplant Center, which received start-up funding from St. Joseph’s Foundation. Now, these people can effortlessly do something that most of us never think twice about: breathe.
When St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center performed its first transplant on 61-year-old Ann Wylie on April 13, 2007, it became the only Phoenix hospital to do lung transplants and one of only two in the state.
“The need in the Valley was huge,” says program coordinator Brandi Krushelniski.
Previously, patients such as Stilwell, whose lungs were failing due to advanced COPD, had to travel far from their homes, to Tucson or, more often, California, for transplant surgery and lifelong follow-ups.
COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), which includes emphysema, is already one of the top causes of death in the United States and is rising. It limits lung capacity, robbing the body of precious oxygen. Pulmonary fibrosis, cystic fibrosis, and pulmonary hypertension are other lung diseases that can be addressed with transplant.
Lung transplants have been reliably performed in the United States since the 1980s. However, despite the Phoenix area’s huge population, Arizona's biggest city lacked a transplant program, and local patients had to travel elsewhere for help—or, worse, not receive any at all.
“In this community, many of the patients with advanced lung disease who were potentially transplantable were being sent to hospice or not being referred to care before we got here,” pulmonologist Tony Hodges, MD, says.
The surgery takes from four to eight hours. It is tightly coordinated, because the less time the donor lungs are without oxygen, the better the outcome. When lungs become available somewhere within a 1,500-mile range—no more than a two-hour flight—a team consisting of a surgeon and a perfusion technician travel to the donor’s location. Back at St. Joseph’s, the recipient is not usually given anesthesia until the team confirms that the lungs are indeed healthy and a good match.
“We’re timing it so their lungs are coming out of their chest as new lungs are coming into the operating room,” Krushelniski says.
Enjoying life again is the biggest side benefit post-transplant. Larry Stilwell, for example, celebrated his six-month anniversary by going fishing at Bartlett Lake, an activity his previous bad health had denied him.
“I caught a 50-pound flathead catfish,” he reports.
