Mayo Clinic marks one-year anniversary performing heart transplantation in Valley

Thursday, October 19, 2006

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - Mayo Clinic in Arizona today reached the one-year milestone of completing its first heart transplant - a significant event not only for Mayo, but for Maricopa County, because it heralded the only heart transplant program in Maricopa County.

Until the Mayo Clinic heart transplant program opened, patients from the Valley had to travel to Tucson, Ariz., or out-of-state for a heart transplant. As of Oct. 19, 2006, 18 heart transplants had been completed at Mayo since the program began.

The surgery was led by Francisco Arabia, M.D., surgical director, who joined Mayo Clinic in 2005, after coming from University Medical Center in Tucson. Also new to Mayo on the transplant team in 2005 was Dr. Robert Scott, who most recently was medical director of Heart Transplantation at Ochsner Clinic Foundation in New Orleans. Also on the medical team is Dr. Eric Steidley, transplant cardiologist at Mayo Clinic.

Mayo's first heart transplant patient, Scottsdale resident Priscilla French, now, one year later, has regained much of her energy, takes walks with her dog and devotes time to visiting and encouraging other patients awaiting a heart transplant. She was also able to meet the pilot of the jet that flew out of state to pick up her donor heart.

French had been outfitted with two ventricular heart devices - titanium heart pumps - to keep her heart functioning until a donor heart became available.

Approval to begin heart transplantation was granted to Mayo by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) in September, 2005, less than one month before the first transplant began.

In addition to heart, Mayo also performs kidney, liver and pancreas transplants as well as blood and marrow transplantation.

Mayo Clinic is the first and largest integrated, not-for-profit group practice in the world. As a leading academic medical center in the Southwest, Mayo Clinic focuses on providing specialty and surgical care in more than 65 disciplines at its outpatient facility in north Scottsdale and at Mayo Clinic Hospital. The 208-licensed bed hospital is located at 56th Street and Mayo Boulevard (north of Bell Road) in northeast Phoenix, and provides inpatient care to support the medical and surgical specialties of the clinic, which is located at 134th Street and Shea Boulevard in Scottsdale.

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