A team of US surgeons has performed the first heart-liver-kidney triple organ transplants in New York.
They completed two of these complex surgical interventions on patients who have since returned home and are making full recoveries.
Heart-liver-kidney transplants are extremely rare: only 58 have been done across the country since the United Network for Organ Sharing, the government agency that oversees transplantation, started tracking cases in 1987.
One of the Mount Sinai cases was the first heart-liver-kidney transplant in New York State, and took place in January.
That procedure gave the patient a second transplanted heart in addition to a liver and kidney transplant, one of only a handful of cases of its kind that have been performed in the US.
The high-risk and complex 22-hour operation was led by Anelechi Anyanwu, vice chair of the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery for the Mount Sinai Health System, and Sander S. Florman, the Charles Miller, MD Professor of Surgery and Director of the Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute at Mount Sinai.
Drs Anyanwu and Florman also led the second heart-liver-kidney transplant in March of this year.
Dr. Florman said: ‘The coordination between our abdominal and thoracic medical and surgical teams was seamless – and the anaesthesia expertise required to perform these transplants was critical. An amazing tour de force for this patient!’
The patient, a 64-year-old man, had previously undergone a heart transplant at The Mount Sinai Hospital in 2002 for complications of sarcoidosis, an autoimmune disease which can damage the heart muscle.
After two healthy decades with the transplant, he developed chronic rejection of the transplanted heart. He also developed deteriorating kidney and liver function, a common complication of long-standing heart disease and anti-rejection medication.
He was hospitalised in December 2024 with severe heart failure and rapidly declining kidney and liver function, and needed three new organs to survive.
His condition took a turn for the worse just after Christmas. On December 30, he underwent emergency surgery to have artificial heart pumps (ventricular assist devices) implanted to keep him alive until a suitable donor was identified.
Two weeks later, he underwent a successful triple organ transplant and is now thriving with no complications.
The other triple-transplant case involved a 45-year-old who received a new heart, liver, and kidney as a result of a severe cardiomyopathy diagnosis.
He had multiple complications during a hospitalisation for an extreme episode of heart failure in 2024, which left him with end-stage kidney disease requiring dialysis and some scarring of his liver.
He was admitted to the hospital in February 2025 with worsening heart failure and was placed on the list for heart and kidney transplantation; at that time, his liver function was marginal yet adequate.
Because of worsening heart failure and cardiogenic shock, he needed two emergency artificial heart pumps to keep his heart functioning and keep him alive until a donor was identified.
By then, his liver function had deteriorated, and he was dying of liver failure.
He was listed for a liver transplant, and several days later, he underwent a successful triple transplant, experiencing a rapid turnaround. The procedure took place in March, and he returned home less than a month later, having made a full recovery.
