Six from One

The 57-year-old New Yorker in Manhattan's Memorial Hospital had an incurable and inoperable brain cancer. After he lapsed into a month-long coma and his brothers knew that he was dying, they decided to let the hospital remove as many organs as possible for transplants in the hope of prolonging life for others. Last week, when the unidentified patient died, a huge surgical complex, which had been on standby alert for a week, moved into swift and multiple action.

Memorial's medical director, Dr. Edward Beattie, called on New York Hospital's surgeon-in-chief, Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, to send for the organs that his staff could use. While the body was perfused with oxygenated blood to ward off tissue degeneration, Lillehei's assistants removed the eyes for fresh-cornea transplants, both kidneys and the heart, and rushed them by underground tunnels to waiting surgery teams. Within a few hours, the Lillehei group had transplanted the heart (into a 36-year-old man), both kidneys and one cornea--the second cornea a day later.

Within Memorial, surgeons removed the donor's liver and the enormously enlarged, cancerous liver of Caroline Varney, 27, a bride of six months. This transplant took far longer than the heart. Not only are the liver's anatomical connections more difficult, but Mrs. Varney's diseased liver presented special problems. At week's end, all four recipients of organs from this six-way surgical achievement seemed to be doing well. The Varney family, like the donor's brothers, hoped that the achievement would encourage others to arrange similar multiple donations.

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