Tadeusz Żytkiewicz, who lived in Poland for the longest time, died with a transplanted heart. He was 91 years old. 30 years ago, prof. Zbigniew Religa. The photo taken of the patient and the doctor right after the surgery went around the world.
- Tadeusz Żytkiewicz, who lived in Poland for the longest time, died with a transplanted heart, he was 91 years old. It was operated by prof. Zbigniew Religa, and the photo of this operation went around the world.
- Tadeusz Żytkiewicz survived with a transplanted heart for 30 years. This is a Polish record. On average, patients live 17 years. Multibillionaire David Rockefeller, whose first heart transplant was done at the age of 61, lived longer after such surgery. But he had seven in total. He died at the age of 101.
- Transplants are still the most effective treatment for extreme heart failure. Annually, about one hundred of them are performed in Poland. About 400 patients are waiting in the queue.
When it turned out that for sixty-year-old Tadeusz Żytkiewicz, a heart transplant is the only salvation, most cardiologists decided that the patient was too old. Today, for cardiac surgeons, a patient of this age is a teenager. A few years ago in Zabrze, a patient, 102 years old, was implanted. However, in 1987, a sixty-year-old, after three heart attacks, who could not leave the house on his own, could not count on such an operation. During a heart attack, a part of this organ dies as a result of a clogged blood supply vessel and, as a consequence, ischemia. After the third heart attack, only a small part of his heart worked for Pan Tadeusz. Doctors couldn’t help him. He heard about the first successful heart transplants performed by Assoc. Zbigniew Religa at the clinic in Zabrze. However, the cardiologists he treated believed that he would not survive such a procedure. Therefore, Żytkiewicz himself wrote a letter to Religion, which invited him to Zabrze. However, during the preliminary research, he found out again that people in their XNUMXs are not transplanted. The patient did not give up and went to the office of prof. Religion.
Historical photo
Religa told him there was virtually no age barrier and put him on a waiting list. After six months of waiting, my wife received a phone call saying that there was a heart. Before entering the operating room, Żytkiewicz saw prof. Religion with photographer James Stanfield from National Geographic. He did not suspect that he would be the one for a photo that would be seen by the whole world. Currently, the survival rate one year after surgery is 80%. Despite the risks and complications, the surgery brings a significant improvement in the quality of life for most patients. On the night of August 4-5, 1987, two transplants took place. One patient died. Żytkiewicz lived thirty years with a transplanted heart.
Under time pressure
The heart is harvested from a deceased donor after a commission confirms that the brain is dead. The donor and recipient are often located in different, sometimes distant hospitals. The collected heart is transported at 4 ° C during transport. Cardiac surgeons always work under time pressure, because they know that the transported heart cannot be deprived of blood for too long. During the organ implantation, the recipient is connected to the extracorporeal circulation, which temporarily replaces the functions of the excised heart. First, the atria are fused, and at the end the aorta. Only after the heart is implanted, the blood flow in the aorta is opened and blood begins to flow through the vessels of the new heart.
Fake heart
Today, artificial hearts are an opportunity for patients waiting for transplants. In the Silesian Center for Heart Diseases in Zabrze, artificial pumps saved the life of a patient who had been waiting the longest for a heart for 600 days. Work on robots and heart prostheses is the main activity of the foundation, founded by prof. Zbigniew Religa. Although the human heart is like a simple pump, engineers recreate its function is an extremely difficult task. Heart assist pumps developed by the foundation have been used more than 300 times.