Tony Huesman, the world's longest living heart transplant recipient died Sunday at age 51, as a result of complications related to cancer. Diagnosed with cardiomyopathy at the age of 16, Huesman received his transplant in 1978 at Stanford University Hospital, where he was one of the first people in the program pioneered by Dr. Norman Shumway. The transplant took place just 11 years following the world's first heart transplant performed in South Africa.
Also diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, Huesman's sister, Linda Huesman Lamb, received a heart transplant in 1983, but died in 1991 at the age of 29. They were the nation's first brother and sister heart transplant recipients.
At the time of Tony Huesman's transplant, five years was the longest anyone had survived with a transplanted heart. Consequently, he was reluctant to make long-term plans, spending his entire career at a job in a sporting-goods store. 21 years after his transplant, he finally got married.
Huesman founded Huesman Heart Foundation, a nonprofit that educates children about heart disease and organ donation, and offers a nursing scholarship in honor of his sister. Available on the Foundation website is a book written by Huesman, entitled "His Only Hope". This book for elementary school children is about organ donation and the need for organs, with the ultimate goal being to dispel some of the negative ideas often associated with organ donation.
In 2000, Huesman became the longest-living American recipient of a single transplanted heart, when a patient who had received a transplant a year before him underwent a second transplant. Huesman is now listed as the world's longest survivor of a single transplanted heart both by Stanford Hospital and United Network for Organ Sharing.
For more info: World's Record Holder Touches Hearts and Souls (Heartbeat Magazine)
*diagram - Schematic of a transplanted heart with native lungs and the great vessels. (Wikimedia Commons)
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