Temple Hospital to resume heart and lung transplants

Temple University Hospital announced Thursday that it had reactivated its heart-, lung-, and heart/lung-transplant programs.

The hospital stopped performing lung transplants in May, after its primary lung-transplant surgeon left. It deactivated its heart-transplant program in July because of low patient volume.

Since then, it has recruited T. Sloan Guy as chief of cardiothoracic surgery and Yoshiya Toyoda as director of heart and lung transplantation and mechanical circulatory support.

Guy said the United Network of Organ Sharing, a nonprofit that manages the U.S. organ-transplant system, gave the hospital interim approval to restart the transplant programs earlier this week.

Before the deactivation, Temple's heart-transplant program had averaged five transplants a year, half the number needed to meet federal quality standards. The Pennsylvania Department of Health had said the lung program had a lower-than-expected survival rate.

Guy said that the program was "fully operational right now" but that there were no patients on the hospital's waiting list.

Patients are being evaluated now. They typically wait six months to a year for a heart or lung transplant. Those who are already waiting can transfer from another facility, but Guy said he was not sure how that would affect their waiting time.

He said his goal was to do 10 of each type of transplant this year.

The hospital, which has a well-respected lung program, has a good referral base for lung-transplant patients, Guy said, and should pick up speed quickly now that Toyoda was on board.

The heart-transplant program was weakened by the loss of several cardiologists who specialized in heart failure, the medical condition that makes patients need transplants, Guy said. Temple medical school's new executive dean, Arthur Feldman, is a heart-failure cardiologist who previously was chair of medicine at Thomas Jefferson University. Temple also has recruited Rene Alvarez, a heart-failure cardiologist from the University of Pittsburgh.

Without a strong heart-failure team, Guy said, a transplant program is "really a fish out of water and you can have all the surgeons in the world."

Guy said Temple had instituted a system of transplant-specific quality committees. Leaders also have been examining patient-treatment protocols. "From top to the bottom, there's been a relook at every aspect of the program," he said.

Transplantation is a fundamental part of training at academic medical centers, he said, and a way of drawing patients who live outside the immediate community.

The presence of a well-run transplant program raises the bar for everybody, he said. "It makes it a better place because if you're doing a lot of high-end transplants, then when you do a routine coronary bypass, it's going to be better."

Asked whether patients don't already have adequate access to transplants at other hospitals in the region, Guy said, "I think a little competition is good for patients and good for the city."