Ohio State performs 800th liver transplant, aims to grow program
Manning Stewart is groggy in his hospital bed, still in a gown, still attached to machines. A few days ago, a surgeon pulled out one of Stewart’s vital organs and replaced it with someone else’s . Recovery is going to take months.
He lies back, obviously drained.
He hasn’t felt this good in years.
“I’m feeling much better,” Stewart says, “now that they took that old liver out.”
Stewart is No. 800, though the doctor who performed his surgery doesn’t want anyone calling him that. That’s the number of liver transplants that have taken place at Ohio State University’s Wexner Center since it began transplanting livers in 1984. (No. 800 doesn’t come with a prize, unless you count the liver.)
And while 800 is a good number, Dr. Ken Washburn says 1,000 is better. He expects Ohio State to hit that landmark in the next few years. In fact, he has big plans for organ transplants across Wexner Medical Center as well as at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
Last month, Washburn was named director of transplant programs at both hospitals. He left a fulfilling, 20-year career at the University of Texas-San Antonio because he saw “a lot of opportunity to move the needle here.”
Ohio State’s organ transplant history does have a few bumps. In 2009, the university halted its lung transplant program for four years because it was performing so few of them. Livers suffered as well, said Dr. Elmahdi Elkhammas, the longtime Ohio State liver transplant surgeon who performed Stewart’s operation.
Back in 2009, the wait list was so short that the hospital only performed 13 liver transplants.
“We kept pushing,” Elkhammas said. “It was just a slow year.”
But the program rebounded. And Elkhammas, like Washburn, expects it to keep growing.
Stewart is ready to move beyond that number, too. He’s ready to get on with life. The 54-year-old resident of Columbus’ South Side felt like slow-churning garbage for three years before he went to the doctor and then to the hospital. It turned out his liver was pocked with cancer.
A person can’t live without a liver, so it was either get a transplant or die.
Nearly 15,000 people in the United States are waiting for a liver, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. Getting the nod isn’t easy. Medical officials have to pick out the best transplant candidates based on things such as insurance, social support and compounding health problems. The patient has to be sick enough to warrant a transplant but not so sick that it wouldn’t be worth it.
And then there has to be an organ. Stewart waited about five months. Twice, he got a call that a liver had become available. Both times he was the backup recipient.
“I mean, you can’t explain it,” he said. “It’s like you gotta wait your turn, and it might not come up at all.”
But that second liver ended up being his. Elkhammas performed the overnight surgery on March 10. Manning Stewart woke up with hope. He would be able to fish and hunt again, to work in construction, to help his wife with the two young grandchildren they’re raising.
And soon, No. 800 — the new and improved Manning Stewart — would get to go home.
“He’s not a number,” Elkhammas said, standing beside Stewart’s bed. “He’s certainly unique.”
