DANVILLE - Entering its 30th year, the transplantation program at Geisinger Medical Center (GMC) has helped many people, but perhaps none of the recipients appreciate it more than Robert "Bob" Luchs, who received a kidney transplant during the program's first year.
Luchs, 82, of Bloomsburg, whose operation was on Aug. 22, 1981 - five days before his 53rd birthday - was the fifth Geisinger recipient to receive new kidneys and is currently the longest living transplant patient of some 1,100 who have received kidneys at GMC.
"It's working alright and I haven't had any trouble with it," he said.
Luchs and his caregiver, Karen Heaps, along with Dr. Chintalapati Verma, director of transplantation surgery at GMC, met with media Monday in the Pine Barn Inn library to talk about how the program has changed since its first kidney transplant on a pediatric patient April 29, 1981, and about Luchs' experience.
Donor was deceased
Luchs, who had undergone dialysis for two years until having the transplantation performed by Dr. John West, is a graduate of Bloomsburg State Normal School and Bloomsburg State Teachers College, the later in 1951.
After graduation he enlisted in the U.S. Army, taking duty in the fall of 1951, where he served as a cryptographer.
When he later returned to Bloomsburg from Washington, D.C., he worked at US Radium and Hanover Brands.
Currently living with Heaps, he was never married or had children, but has a brother who lives in South Carolina.
Verma said the case with Luchs was unique as he had received a kidney from a deceased donor, from the Chicago area. The half-life, or expected functioning life, of a kidney from a cadaver is eight to 10 years, while the half-life of a kidney from a live donor is 18 to 20 years.
The oldest kidney recipient at Geisinger thus far is 78 years old, while the youngest ever was 6 years old.
Since Geisinger's program began, the success rate for kidney transplant recipients surviving one year has increased from about 80 percent to about 95 percent for those with a kidney from a deceased donor and 97 percent for those with a kidney from a living donor.
Most of the transplants are now taken from live donors.
Since the first successful transplant in 1954 - between identical twins at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Boston, Mass., associated with Harvard Medical School - the procedure has become standardized, and so has the immunosuppressant medicine. That makes a kidney transplant easier to perform than a liver, pancreas or small-bowel transplant, Verma said.
The time people spend in the hospital after the surgery has also decreased, three to four days compared to what was believed to be a couple months for Luchs.
"He must have gotten a pretty darn good kidney," Verma said. "The other thing that is fascinating is we have really powerful modern immunosuppressant medication, but he's actually on the original medication from the early 1960s, when transplant really came about for the kidneys."
The medicines that Luchs currently takes are Imuran and Prednizone.
Verma said that, by this time, a lot of kidneys would have failed.
Today, Geisinger is one of only a few transplant centers in the country where use of what's called tolerogenic immunosuppression limits the need for steroids after surgery and reduces the risk of rejection.
Physicians and surgeons are using both new and tested techniques like this to improve long-term health and quality of life.
Besides becoming ill in 2008, where Heaps said she feared they would lose him, Luchs has had no problems with his kidneys.
He has also been diabetic for the past two years, but measurements related to his kidneys have been within normal limits.
Pancreas, liver, too
While it's been 30 years since the first kidney transplant at Geisinger, the first pancreas transplant didn't occur until 2004 and the first liver transplant later in 2006 at GMC. The liver transplant program was started by Verma.
In setting up the program, he said that he spent months preparing before the first procedure, for which all of the staff needed to be trained and things needed to be set in place such as physicians, gastroenterologists, nutritionists, dieticians, intensive care physicians, sources from the blood bank and infection disease physicians, among others.
For future organs to be added to the program, all of these same things need to be arranged, and organs are only added to the list if needed.
"If you look at the U.S. for small bowel transplants, centers need to have a high volume and the centers in Philadelphia are just meeting that," Verma said.
Geisinger performs about five pancreas transplants per year, nearly as many as much larger programs such as in Philadelphia, which do about five to seven.
Since the first liver transplant Aug. 13, 2006, Geisinger has performed about 54 liver transplants.
Kidney exchange
Geisinger Health System is now offering a kidney exchange program.
It's developed with the thought that many spouses want to donate, but are incompatible with their loved one because of with blood types. However, coordinating such offers nationwide helps find compatible donors who exchange kidneys on behalf of their loved ones.
Also, Geisinger is now performing operations such as kidney transplants at its locations in State College, Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre.
For more information about organ transplantation programs offered in the Geisinger Health System, patients can schedule an appointment by calling 1-800-275-6401 or by filling out a form online at www.geisinger.org/services/transplant/.