1st kidney transplant in El Paso

September 29, 1987

By Benjamin Keck
El Paso Times

A kidney was transplanted Monday into a patient at Sierra Medical Center, the first time a major organ transplant operation has been performed in El Paso.

A second kidney transplant could take place at Sierra within weeks, said Mark fry, administrator of the Central El Paso hospital.

“Several patients and family member donors are being evaluated,” Fry said. “But first we want to get) Monday’s recipient) well and taken care of. We want to take our time and do it right.”

Sierra’s new transplant program could be expanded in the near future to include other major organs, especially bone marrow and the pancreas, Fry said.

He said the kidney transplanted Monday was taken from a living relative of the patient. The operation, including removing the kidney from the donor and putting it into the patient, took about 3 1/2 hours.

Fry said the family asked that no personal information be released and that he not give names, ages, addresses or gender of either the donor of the recipient.

“Both are in critical but stable condition in (the intensive care unit),” Fry said Monday evening, several hours after the operation was completed. “That is all I can tell you at this time.”

An El Paso television station, however, reported that the donor and recipient were a brother and sister from Las Cruces. That could not be confirmed late Monday. It was not clear which was the recipient.

Marelena Sykora, a registered nurse and transplant coordinator at Sierra, said the kidney was removed from the donor in one operating room and taken immediately to the recipient in an adjacent operating room.

It took about 35 minutes from the time the kidney was removed until it was connected to the recipient, she said.

The kidney was taken from the donor and washed in what Sykora called a “slush solution” of fine ice, much like a Slurpee. The solution contained a number of nutrients to keep the kidney functioning until it could be connected to the recipient.

The original kidneys were left in the recipient.

“They are left in unless they cause repeated infections or uncontrollable high blood pressure,” Skyora said. “Some transplant centers require that the native kidneys be removed, but we don’t require it here. They don’t have to be removed.”

Kidneys are in the upper abdominal cavities. A transplanted kidney is placed below the cervical bone below the waist, either on the right or left side.

There are two kidneys in the body, but people can function normally with just one.

Fry said the transplant team Monday was made up of a dozen people, including nine physicians. Among the physicians were Dr. William Graham Guerriero, ch8ief of urology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and R.. George Noon, a thoracic surgeon and instructor at Baylor.

Guerriero has performed more than 500 kidney transplants in 17 years.

The doctors were not available for interviews Monday, but Fry said a briefing by Dr. Alfonso Chavez, medical director of Sierra’s dialysis center, is scheduled for Wednesday.

Plans for Monday’s transplant had been in the works for months, Fry said. Planning for a transplant program at Sierra started about two years ago.

“We decided to go ahead with it because there is a need for this type of medical care in El Paso,” Fry said. “In 1986, 33 El Pasoans went elsewhere for organ transplants. Through Sept. 18 of this year, we discovered, only eight El Pasoans had gone elsewhere for transplants, even though thee are the same number of people on waiting lists as last year.

“That led us to believe that going great distances for this type of care was a financial hardship and that patients were going without needed care.”

Fry cited statistics showing that the annual median income in El Paso is $8,175, compared with $10,858 in Lubbock, which at 382 miles away is the nearest place in Texas where kidney transplants can be performed.

Comments

[AJR]

Im sorry I am not following. My brother had a successful kidney transplant at Sierra in 04.

[AJR]

My brother had a successful kidney transplant at Sierra in 04. I'm sorry but not following the story, or timeline I should say.

[A Hillbilly]

This blog is a history blog. It runs old stories from the Times files. The story is dated 1987 -- 17 years before '04. The date of original story is a the top. It is a cool blog to read, especially when stories from the late 1800s or early 1900s are run.