Forty years ago, on April 24, 1984, Temple University Hospital made headline news by performing Philadelphia’s very first heart transplant. The donor was a 16-year-old female, and the recipient a 49-year-old male.
“This medical odyssey—and it truly was at the time—marked a turning point in medicine for the entire Delaware Valley, and put Temple in the national spotlight as a fast-emerging leading center for adult heart transplantation,” says Abhi Rastogi, MBA, MIS, President and CEO of Temple University Hospital.
Four Decades of Leadership in Academic Medicine
After launching its heart transplant program, Temple would go on to develop programs in lung, kidney, liver, bone marrow, and pancreas transplantation that are still setting the standard for transplant outcomes today.
“We’ve achieved numerous nationally recognized outcomes, contributing significant milestones to transplant medicine history along the way,” Karen Rafferty, MSN, RN, CCTC, AVP of Transplant Services, says. “But if you want to understand how far we’ve come, you have to think about what transplantation was like in the mid-1980s, when Temple’s program was founded.”
At that point, each hospital handled organ recovery and transplantation independently. There were no systems for finding compatible donors and recipients, nor were the testing technologies to identify matches anything like they are today.
Organ rejection also loomed large. When Temple’s programs began, cyclosporine, the first immunosuppressive drug, had just been introduced. It was a critical breakthrough, but required meticulous management, and often caused serious side effects. Organ procurement, preservation, and transport techniques were likewise limited.
Surgical techniques were also far less advanced. Today, surgeons are able to perform transplants that cause far fewer side effects and far less stress for the patient, and can repair donor organs that, in the past, would have never been considered suitable for transplantation. We can also leverage innovative devices and technologies as bridges to transplant.
In short, since that first headline-making Temple heart transplant in 1984, the field of organ transplantation has advanced dramatically, and Temple has remained at the leading edge of the field.
“Temple hasn’t just benefitted from these advances—we’ve contributed to them,” Kenneth Chavin, MD, MBA, PhD, FACS, Director of the Abdominal Organ Transplant Program at Temple University Hospital, explains. “For four decades, we’ve been addressing critical challenges in the field to improve outcomes—and in doing so, we’ve advanced transplantation science.”
Expanding Access and Equity
It makes sense, then, that Temple has produced a high volume of cutting-edge research on transplantation, which has been published in leading outlets like the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation. These studies address an impressive spectrum of topics, from immunosuppression to pregnancy and transplantation to COVID and transplant outcomes.
But one particular area of transplantation research has a special connection to our mission. Temple has conducted numerous studies showing that certain transplantation criteria can be expanded without sacrificing results. For example, one study shows that the blood types of donor and recipient can be compatible, but not necessarily identical, with no negative impact on patient outcome. This would make it much easier for recipients to find a match, and thus to receive a donation.
“That’s what Temple is all about: opening doors, helping more people,” explains Francis C. Cordova, MD, Medical Director of the Lung Transplantation Program at Temple University Hospital. “We’re known for transplanting older patients, sicker patients, patients with higher body mass index. We help the patients that other hospitals turn away.”
In addition to embracing more challenging cases, Temple also welcomes expanded-criteria donor organs.
“As a result, you might expect Temple’s outcomes to be less than stellar—but that isn’t the case,” says Yoshiya Toyoda, MD, PhD, Chief of Cardiovascular Surgery, Surgical Director of Thoracic Transplantation, and Director of Mechanical Circulatory Support at Temple University Hospital, and Co-Surgical Director of the Temple Heart & Vascular Institute. “Our outcomes are excellent, and our survival rates are outstanding. In fact, they’re among the best in the nation.”
For all these reasons, Temple has become one of the nation’s major transplant referral centers, as well as an important educational hub. In addition to attracting surgeons and internists who want to specialize in transplantation, the Biomedical Sciences programs at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University educate future transplant scientists.
“A Giant Point of Pride”
As you may already know, April is Donate Life Month: a time to honor organ and tissue donors and their families, the recipients of their priceless gifts, and the care teams who make it all happen.
This year, Donate Life Month is extra special, as it’s the perfect chance for us to celebrate the anniversary of our—and Philadelphia’s—first heart transplant. Not only does that landmark fall within April, but this month is also the 50th anniversary of Gift of Life: our region’s transplant coordination organization. Since its founding in 1974, Gift of Life has coordinated more than 58,000 organ transplants and more than two million tissue transplants.
In the last half century, the entire landscape of organ transplantation medicine has evolved significantly—in part thanks to the sizable contributions of Temple and Gift of Life.
“Thanks to our care teams’ hard work, there are more people enjoying their quality time on this earth to be with loved ones, to pursue their dreams, to raise their kids, to see their grandchildren, and to volunteer in their communities. It’s a giant point of pride,” Rastogi says.
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Highlights in Transplant History
1869 — First successful skin autograft transplantation
1905 — First successful cornea transplant
1954— First successful kidney transplant
1966— First simultaneous kidney/pancreas transplant
1967— First successful liver transplant
1967— First successful heart transplant
1981— First successful heart-lung transplant
1984 — Temple performs first heart transplant in Philadelphia
1984 — National Organ Transplant Act & Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network established
1985 — Temple performs first pediatric heart transplant in Philadelphia, the 12th such operation in the world
1986 — United Network for Organ Sharing begins managing allocation of organs
1987 — Temple performs first heart-lung transplant in Philadelphia
1989 — Temple founds its kidney transplant program
1990 — Temple surpasses 200 heart transplants
1998 — CMS requires all hospitals to report all deaths and approaching deaths to organ procurement organizations
2008 — First successful complete full double arm transplant
2010 — First successful full face transplant
2015 — Temple performs its first heart/liver transplant (in 2016, only 18 such transplants were performed in the U.S.)
2021 — Temple performs Pennsylvania’s first lung transplant using a technology that keeps donor lungs “breathing” until transplantation
2022 — Temple is named Top Hospital in the Hospital Association of Pennsylvania’s Donate Life Challenge
2022 — The U.S. reaches 1 million transplants: more than any other country in the world
2023 — Temple is recognized for the 8th consecutive year as the highest volume lung transplant center in the nation
2024 — Temple’s three-year survival rate after heart transplant stands at 86.07%, surpassing the national average of 85%, despite taking on some of the most challenging cases