Heart and lung transplant to save Lutz woman a first for Tampa General

TAMPA — Judith Falcon’s heart conditions first emerged more than 20 years ago with symptoms of fatigue and breathlessness.
Medication helped but within a few years, doctors warned the Lutz woman that her life was at risk from conditions that included severe pulmonary hypertension.
In 2009, she spent 45 days in intensive care and had to quit her job as a nurse at an assisted living facility. Her chances of survival dimmed further last year when she suffered an aneurysm and fluid was discovered around her heart.
After being referred to Tampa General Hospital, specialists put Falcon, 57, on a waiting list for a heart and lung transplant. It was an almost year-long wait, but she underwent surgery on March 1. Her operation was the first successful heart-lung transplant performed at Tampa General.
The six-hour surgery required months of preparation by a team of heart and lung specialists. This kind of surgery is rare, with only 45 heart-lung transplants performed in the United States in 2022, according to the most recent data available from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients.
“It’s a huge milestone for our program to be able to share in the limelight of such a complex surgery with a great outcome,” said Kapilkumar Patel, director of the hospital’s Center for Advanced Lung Disease and Lung Transplant Program.
Other than a break for the holidays, Falcon spent around 250 days in the hospital as doctors wanted to make sure she was close by when a suitable donor became available. It also allowed for multiple drainages of the fluid around her heart.
Four surgeons were in the operating room for the procedure: cardiothoracic surgeons Lucian Lozonschi and Osman Ali; Tampa General Thoracic Transplantation Fellow Leonardo DaCosta and Gundars Katlaps, a cardiothoracic and transplant surgeon.
Surgery began at 9 a.m. Falcon was put on a heart-lung machine before her trachea was severed. Removing her heart and lungs and clamping closed attached blood vessels took about two hours, Katlaps said.
Surgeons then connected her trachea to the new lungs before attaching the heart and connecting blood supply to both organs. Another two hours was spent ensuring there was no significant bleeding, he said.
“We have to be fast,” Katlaps said. “If we take too much time, the organs will not do well.”
Falcon’s relative young age made her a good candidate for the procedure but she was a high-risk case, said Benjamin Mackie, a heart failure specialist who treats Falcon.
She will need to take medication to prevent her body rejecting the organs for the rest of her life and will be cared for by Tampa General specialists because of the complexity of the surgery.
Keep up with Tampa Bay’s top headlines
Subscribe to our free DayStarter newsletter
We’ll deliver the latest news and information you need to know every morning.
You’re all signed up!
Want more of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s get started.
Explore all your options
“This is a surgery that will give her the best long-term chance of survival,” Mackie said. “She was not long for this Earth without a transplant.”
The first successful heart-lung transplant was performed in 1981 at Stanford Medical Center. The procedure was first performed in Florida in 2002 at the Mayo Clinic in Florida. The Jacksonville hospital has only performed the surgery 10 times since. UF Health Heart and Vascular Hospital in Gainesville has performed 20 such surgeries, according to a hospital spokesperson.
Falcon remembers going into surgery but nothing else until waking up the following day and holding her doctor’s hand and briefly standing up. Just two days later, she was out of bed walking about 100 steps around the nurses’s station.
She was discharged from hospital on April 5 and went to stay with her daughter.
“This is a miracle for me; those doctors are amazing,” she said. “It’s in God’s hands that put me with those doctors.”
Falcon’s second grandchild was born in February while she was in the hospital waiting for a donor. The chance to hold and play with him and to see both her grandkids grow up was the encouragement she needed to believe the operation would be a success, she said.
Four months after surgery, Falcon is walking up to three miles “like a normal person,” she said. One of those walks included a trip along the Tampa Riverwalk, which she could see from her hospital room.
She also plans to fly to Lima, Peru, to take care of her parents who are in their 80′s.
“I feel so blessed that I’ve been given another chance of life and I’m really grateful for the donor and pray for their family,” she said.
link