Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Longest survivor of heart transplant dies

San Francisco Business Times

Tony Huesman died of cancer 31 years after getting a heart transplant at Stanford Hospital & Clinics. He was the longest survivor with a single heart transplant.

Huesman, from Dayton, Ohio, got his transplanted heart in August 1978 in an operation by surgeon Norman Shumway, M.D., in Stanford’s then ten-year-old transplant program.

He died Aug. 9, Stanford said. He was 51.

In high school Huesman was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a progressive disease that weakens the heart.

Though experts told Huesman he would likely live five years after the surgery, he went back to Dayton, worked in a sporting goods store, and got married in 1997.

His sister, Linda Lamb, also got a heart transplant at Stanford in 1983. She died in 1991.

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