University of Iowa Hospitals mark 5,000 organ transplants

IOWA CITY - They received regular updates throughout the surgery. His heart is out. He's on a bypass machine. Everything is stable.

'Then ... the heart's in,” Kim Scadlock, 33, said, recounting the six hours that transformed her family's life nearly eight years ago when her then 16-day-old son had heart transplant surgery at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

From the moment Beckham Scadlock was born Aug. 1, 2007, he was gasping for breath. He had 'this horrible blue-gray color,” his mom said. And then the nurses brought him back after his heart surgery.

'That was the best part,” Scadlock said. 'Even though he had just had his chest cut open and was all swollen, he looked pink.”

The nurse told Scadlock to hold her son's tiny foot.

'Can you feel his pulse?” the nurse asked.

'It was amazing to see the difference,” Scadlock said. 'A life came into him with that little heart. He was a whole new baby.”

Beckham's operation is among the 5,000 transplants the UIHC Organ Transplant Center has performed since 1969 - a milestone the university announced Monday, after it had completed a liver transplant in March.

The UI program was the state's first and remains its only multi-organ transplant program serving both adult and pediatric patients.

Iowans account for 85 percent of the transplant patients, coming from 96 of the state's 99 counties. But the center also has served people from across the country and world - representing 46 states and 12 countries, according to Jean Robillard, vice president for UI medical affairs.

'This milestone gives us an opportunity to reflect not only on the quantity of transplants performed at Iowa but on the quality of our outcomes,” said Alan Reed, director of the UI transplant center. 'Our survival rates rank well above the national average for a center of our size and for all of the organ types.”'

‘I WOULD HAVE DIED WITHOUT IT'

Bill Klahn has witnessed the good that can accompany the fear.

He's a 61-year-old personal trainer in Cedar Rapids planning to compete next month in the YMCA Masters National Championship swim meet in Sarasota, Fla.

But 10 years ago, he was staring down death.

'I was so tired I couldn't walk across the room. I couldn't get in and out of a car,” Klahn said. 'My legs were so swollen, I thought they were going to pop.”

In 2000, he was diagnosed with hepatitis C. It ravaged his life, leaving him unemployed, depressed, and living with his brother in Solon.

Then in 2005, he was diagnosed with liver cancer. He went on the transplant list that spring and a month later got a match.

'I was scared,” Klahn said. 'You're scared to go through it, and you're scared to die.”

He had been warned that recovering from a liver transplant was slow and rough and could leave him unable to work for a year. But the procedure was his only option.

Afterward, Klahn said, he got a membership at the North Dodge Athletic Club in Iowa City and became a regular.

'The surgeon said that my excellent physical condition was instrumental in my quick recovery,” he said.

Today, Klahn spends much of his time exercising, eating right, and helping others do the same. And he credits that to the transplant.

'It has given me a new purpose and new goals,” he said. 'I would have died without it - probably that year.”

‘No longer the Tinman'

Beckham Scadlock was transferred from Des Moines to UIHC at only 5 days old, with little shot at survival. Doctors discovered the valves in his heart didn't function properly and he would need a transplant.

But that was unlikely. Doctors gave him a 30 percent chance at receiving a heart and warned of a six-month wait time.

But because he was on complete life support, Beckham was at the top of the list for hearts from babies weighing to 15 pounds. And, on Aug. 16, 2007, the family learned of a match in New York.

'No longer the Tinman,” Scadlock wrote in a blog entry that day. 'We now have a heart for our little boy.”

The parents of Beckham's 10-week-old heart donor, who died unexpectedly while in a bouncy seat, stumbled upon Scadlock's blog and began following it.

The families began communicating by email, met in 2010 at the U.S. Transplant Games and remain close.

'They were the ones to approach the hospital staff about organ donation,” Scadlock said. 'They had to make something good out of this.”