Sister's Tragic Death Results in Life-Saving Transplant For Brother in Kidney Failure
January 29, 2008
| In a case that literally and figuratively highlights both the “gift of life” and the “gift of love,” North Shore University Hospital surgeons announced today they performed a life-saving kidney transplant on a Queens man, using the organs of his sister who died unexpectedly of cerebral aneurysm. The transplant recipient, Seung Hoon Lee, 38, spoke today at a news conference, joined by members of his family and surgeons who performed the transplant – the hospital’s first involving a donation from a deceased relative.
Finding a kidney for Mr. Lee would be no easy task, considering that out of the 5,043 people in the New York metropolitan area waiting for kidneys, nine percent are Asians, according to the New York Organ Donor Network (NYODN). The average wait time for a matching donor is seven years. The number of Asian recipients who received kidneys in 2006 was only eight percent. Throughout the US, approximately 100,000 people are on the kidney waiting list -- and 6,000 die each year waiting. Last week, tragedy struck the Lee family when Ms. Lee died suddenly of a cerebral aneurysm. The urgency of Mr. Lee's illness demanded that he be placed on the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) waiting list immediately. The family's consent to direct a donation to Mr. Lee turned an unexpected family tragedy into both a gift of life and love. The two were a 100 percent match (a true rarity usually found only in identical twins). Having saved her brother’s life, Ms. Lee now lives on in her brother in the truest sense of the word. Mr. Lee was one of the first transplant patients in the New York area to receive two kidneys from a deceased relative. The surgery was performed on January 21 at North Shore University Hospital - the first and only transplant program in Nassau and Queens counties -- by Ernesto Molmenti, MD, MBA, PhD, the hospital’s vice chairman of surgery and director of transplantation, assisted by Corrado Marini, MD, vice chairman of surgery and chief of critical care at LIJ Medical Center. Despite its combined population of 3.5 million people, Nassau and Queens counties had been without access to a nearby transplant center until the opening of NSUH’s program – the hospital performed its first transplant last fall. About 70 percent of kidney transplants performed in the New York metropolitan area involved residents from Nassau and Queens, according to the latest statistics. In 2006, the latest year for which statistics were available, 873 residents of Queens and 317 residents of Nassau County were on waiting lists for kidneys, according to the New York Organ Donor Network. Of those on the waiting list, 39 Queens residents and 13 Nassau County residents died in 2006 without ever receiving one. In another reflection of the need for a local transplant program, 209 of the 291 transplants performed in the New York metropolitan area in 2005 involved residents of Queens and Nassau counties, according to state statistics. Until NSUH’s transplant program opened, residents of those counties have had to travel to Manhattan, Brooklyn, Westchester or eastern Suffolk County to find a hospital with a transplant program. About North Shore-LIJ Health System The nation's third largest, non-profit, secular healthcare system, the North Shore-LIJ Health System cares for people of all ages throughout Long Island, Queens and Staten Island – a service area encompassing more than five million people. Including its clinical affiliates, the health system consists of 15 hospitals, 13 long-term care facilities, a medical research institute, four trauma centers, five home health agencies and dozens of outpatient centers. The members and affiliates of North Shore-LIJ house more than 9,000 beds, and are staffed by over 8,000 physicians, about 11,000 nurses and a total workforce of more than 38,000 -- the largest employer on Long Island and the ninth largest in New York City. Media Contact: Adina Conn 516-465-2620 |
