Health of Europe’s First Heart-Kidney

A Magna Cum Laude, Junior Year AOA graduate and freshman Class '73 President of the Georgetown University School of Medicine is a holder of an MBA from the University of California at Irvine, J.A. (John) Macoviak, MD trained for 3 years by Norman E Shumway MD PhD, Ed Stinson MD, Phil Oyer MD and John C. Baldwin MD at Stanford to do heart transplants in 1987 he founded the Washington Regional Transplant consortium, where he did the first 30 heart transplants in Washington DC. He worked under Bob Wallace MD, Paul Corso MD and Jorge Garcia MD then retired due to Graves Disease at Mayo Clinic 2 decades later where he worked with Chris C.G. MacGregor MD and Hartzel Schaff MD.. All these are great technical highly respected surgeons. In addition to this, he was on the faculty at Harvard medical school with Larry H. Cohen MD. Throughout his career, John Macoviak, MD, has made significant progress in the medical field, such as completing the first heart/pancreas transplant procedure in 1988, the pancreas surgery was done by Hans Sollinger MD and Jimmy Light MD, the heart component was successful but the pancreas did not function from a potential multitude of unknown immunological reasons. As always pioneers are politically controversial.

On February 20, 1990, Europe’s first heart-kidney-pancreas transplant was performed. Done on a 42-year-old male who suffered from Type 1 diabetes, the procedure was performed on an urgent basis after the patient went into congestive heart failure (CHF) due to diabetic coronary issues. At the same time, the patient was experiencing worsening renal insufficiency (RI).

Shortly after the procedure, all three organs began functioning normally. The patient no longer needed insulin therapy, and he returned to his work roughly six months after the procedure.

However, it was the long-term positive effects that were more significant. After 11 years, the patient was still doing well and was actively involved in both social and recreational activities after retiring from work two years before. Both his renal and cardiac functions were strong, but he did experience some deterioration of his glucose tolerance.