Bellingham woman receives history-making dual transplant
A Bellingham woman is recovering from a history-making dual transplant of a liver and a heart, in a first for the University of Washington Medicine surgeons.
The transplants of a liver and heart were to prevent the possibility her body would reject the donor heart, testing the idea a donor liver would increase immunoprotection on a donor heart transplant.
Adriana Rodriguez, 31, has been recovering since the Jan. 14 transplant, according to Dr. Shin Lin, a cardiologist at the UW Medicine Heart Institute.
Dual heart and liver transplants are rarely performed, Lin said. This particular case was a first for UW Medicine surgeons.
According to the UW, Rodriguez’s case was unusual because the donor liver transplant was done because doctors absolutely believed her body would reject a heart that she desperately needed.
To make room for the new liver, her healthy liver was transplanted into another patient who had advanced liver disease.
“She met all criteria for transplant, but her antibodies (to the antigens of organ donors) were the highest we’ve ever seen,” Lin said. “Finding an immunologic match for her heart alone was going to be like trying to win the lottery. Essentially she would have needed the donor to be her immunologic twin.”
On Dec. 7, 2022, Rodriguez’s need for a heart transplant came from a spontaneous tear within her coronary artery that happened two weeks after she gave birth to her third child.
“There are thought to be hormonal changes and stress in pregnancy that can make the coronary arteries vulnerable to these tears,” said Dr. Daniel Fishbein, a heart failure specialist on Rodriguez’s team. “In the best-case scenario, a dissection heals without much heart damage and the patient goes home with medications and gets better. But this patient had terrible heart failure.”
Doctors concluded Rodriguez had a 99% likelihood of rejecting the new heart.
After other ideas or techniques were ruled out to save Rodriguez, she was placed on the transplant list. A new heart and liver became available on Jan. 14.
The procedure, which took 17 hours, was performed at UW Medical Center-Montlake.
“There are no words to express my gratitude for my exceptional care — to the doctors and surgeons brainstorming on how to save my life, to my nurses for going the extra mile to make me feel comfortable, and to everyone working on my case who I didn’t get to meet,” Rodriguez said.
