Mayo Clinic to perform heart transplants in Phoenix

Angela Gonzales

The Business Journal

Mayo Clinic's board of governors voted to begin a heart transplant program within the next 12 to 18 months in the Valley, Mayo officials said Wednesday.

This will be the first heart transplant program in the Valley. University Medical Center in Tucson has a heart transplant program 100 miles away.

Banner Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center, which has an organ transplant program, considered adding heart transplants, but after talking to Dr. Jack Copeland at UMC, decided against it.

Dr. Pierre Tibi, chief of cardiac surgery at Banner Good Samaritan, said the donors were scarce five years ago when he looked into the matter.

"We did not feel that starting a program at the time would be in the best interest of the state of Arizona," Tibi said. He feels the same way today.

But that's not to minimize what Mayo is doing, he said. Mayo has a solid heart transplant program at its facilities in Minnesota and Florida.

At Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix alone, doctors have performed more than 500 organ, blood and marrow transplants.

The new heart transplant program at Mayo will benefit from the infrastructure already in place that supports the solid organ transplant programs and includes clinical protocols consistent with those at Mayo in Rochester, Minn., and Jacksonville, Fla., said Dr. Victor Trastek, chairman of the board of governors at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale.

"We've been working on this for at least six years," Trastek said.

Mayo already offers kidney, liver and pancreas transplantation at its Phoenix hospital.

"We're excited to bring this high level of cardiovascular care for patients in the Phoenix area."

As the fifth largest city in the country, Phoenix was the only city without a heart transplant program, Trastek said.

Nationally, for every patient receiving a heart, two patients are waiting for a transplant or will have died while waiting.

For more: www.mayoclinic.org/scottsdale.

Copyright © 2004 American City Business Journals Inc.

This article posted October 4, 2004.