Elizabeth Wehrle, of Montezuma, received a quadruple organ transplant earlier this year, receiving a new liver, kidney and retransplanted lungs. This week, she gets to return home.
The 36-year-old has cystic fibrosis. She said when she was younger, the condition manifested through GI problems and an inability to digest fatty foods, but when she got pregnant with her son in 2014, she began to experience more lung problems. After being put on oxygen full time, she had her first lung transplant in 2017. But in February of this year, she was diagnosed with a severe form of chronic rejection.
Doctors soon discovered additional organ failure due to complications from her cystic fibrosis.
“At that time, we did not know that I fully would need a new kidney and liver,” Wehrle said on Talk of Iowa. “We were still running some tests to decide if that was the case. But once that came back that yes, I would need the four organs, I knew right then and there that it was going to be harder than the first time.”
Only seven quadruple organ transplants have been performed in the U.S., but Wehrle’s procedure is the first with retransplanted lungs after her body rejected her first transplant, according to the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients.
Dr. Ankit Bharat, executive director of the Canning Thoracic Institute at Northwestern Medicine, was the lead surgeon. He explained that several factors make this type of operation challenging. Firstly, patients with multiple failing organs are very sick.
“The second thing is there is only a certain amount of time the organs can stay outside the human body and not see blood flow, and if it goes beyond that period, then they start to die,” Bharat said. “The cells within the organs start to die. So we have to replace all these organs in a very time-sensitive manner.”
Heavy scarring from previous surgeries can also distort normal anatomy and make operating difficult. Additionally, the length and delicate nature of the surgery are intense for both the surgeon team and the patient's body to go through.
Surgeons started the double-lung retransplant on March 22, with more surgeons completing her liver and kidney transplant later on in the early morning of March 23. The total operation took around eight hours.
Bharat said the success of Werhle’s surgery shows there's hope for patients who develop complications and rejections after a transplant. He credits the collaboration across multiple medical teams, including various surgeons, anesthesiologists, critical care specialists and others, for Werhle’s successful operation.
“When people hear about a historic transplant surgery, you know they often focus on the operation itself, but really what made Elizabeth's case successful was the extraordinary teamwork that occurred before, during and after the surgery,” he said at a press conference on the procedure.
Now, Werhle said she’s ready to return home and spend time with her 11-year-old son.
"I am gonna hug my son and then I'm gonna pet my cats, because I left my house in February, not intending to be gone this long,” she said. “And I'm gonna sleep in my own bed, and it's gonna be amazing.”
To hear this conversation, listen to Talk of Iowa, hosted by Charity Nebbe. Dani Gehr produced this episode.
