2 UF students die after transplants
By JACK STRIPLING
Sun staff writer
December 10, 2007
Two University of Florida students died last month due to complications from transplant operations, but success rates for such surgeries have seen improvement in recent years, according to health officials.
Cheryl Martinez, 20, died Nov. 28 shortly after a kidney transplant at Shands at UF, officials said. Another student, 19-year-old Shara Himmel, died Nov. 18 in Gainesville due to complications from a May heart transplant surgery, officials said. According to the St. Petersburg Times, Himmel's surgery was performed at a hospital in Tampa.
Dr. Ulf Meier-Kriesche, a professor of medicine at UF, said acute rejections of kidneys occurred in 50 percent of patients in the 1990s; that number is now at 15 percent. Similar gains have been seen in heart transplants, he said.
Meier-Kriesche credits several medical advances for the increased success of transplants. One of the primary reasons for the change has been the development of new methods that suppress the body's immune response to a new organ, he said. When an organ is transplanted, the body's immune system views it as an "invader" not unlike a virus or bacteria, he said. By suppressing that response, the organ has a greater chance of survival.
"In several different areas there has been very substantial progress," said Meier-Kriesche, medical director of Shands at UF's kidney-pancreas transplant program.
Kidney transplant recipients who received organs from a deceased donor had a survival rate after five years of 69 percent in 2006. Some 72 percent of heart transplant recipients also survived after five years, according to transplant.org, a registry of recipients.
Availability of organs remains a major hurdle for transplant patients. As of Friday, there were 98,053 people on transplant waiting lists, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.
"The gap between supply and demand is increasing every year," Meier-Kriesche said.
Martinez, who had Lupus, waited 1 1/2 years before she received her kidney transplant. She made an excited entry on her Facebook page after her long wait for a kidney ended.
"Tuesday morning at 3:30 a.m. I got a phone call from Shands saying they received a kidney for me," she wrote Nov. 21. "So I had my transplant yesterday and it's working perfectly. I wanna thank everyone who has been with me through my times dealing with Lupus and the recent diagnoses of renal failure. You guys are the best. Thank You."
Myriam Martinez, Cheryl Martinez's mother, said her daughter was ambivalent about the surgery.
"She was excited and she was scared because she knew she could reject it," Myriam Martinez said.
Martinez, an Ocala resident, was diagnosed with Lupus at the age of 10, but you seldom heard her complain about chemotherapy and other invasive treatments, her mother says.
"She never complained. No matter what she went through, she always saw what good it was going to come out to," Myriam Martinez recalls.
Himmel, who died from complications after a heart transplant, also kept a positive attitude in the face of adversity, according to her friends.
Himmel had her first heart transplant at the age of 4 and had another in May, according to Michael Wolcott, a high school classmate of Himmel's and a UF student.
Himmel, a St. Petersburg resident who enjoyed tie-dying T-shirts, died just before her 20th birthday.
Her friends went ahead with a tie-dye party that she'd planned for her birthday last week, Wolcott said.
"She was just an awesome person," Wolcott said. "She was completely energetic. She was able to get along with anybody who came in contact with her. If you were around for five minutes, you would feel a bond."
Jack Stripling can be reached at 352-374-5064 or Jack.Stripling@gvillesun.com.
Copyright © 2007 The Gainesville Sun.
This article posted January 13, 2008.