Teen-Ager With New Heart Is Imperiled by Kidneys

Doctors transplanted a heart into an Indiana teen-ager who had been kept alive for five days with a pair of external plastic pumps, but said Wednesday that the boy has only a slim chance of surviving unless his kidneys start working soon.

Michael C. Jones, 16, also has a higher risk of infection because of openings made in his skin for the pumps and dialysis machine, his surgeon said.

“If we can get his kidneys back, I think we can save him,” Dr. Laman Gray Jr. said at a news conference. “If not, there’s no way.”

The doctor said he thinks there is an 80% or 90% chance that Jones’ kidneys will resume functioning.

The heart recipient was still “critically ill,” said Gray, who estimated Jones’ chance of survival at 20% to 25%.

Jones received his new heart during surgery Tuesday night at Jewish Hospital. In the operation, the boy’s diseased heart and the plastic pumps that kept it beating were removed and the donor heart transplanted.

The operation began about 8:30 p.m. and lasted for five hours, said Dr. Gerald Temes, chairman of the Louisville Institute for Heart and Lung Disease at Jewish Hospital.

Doctors began looking for a new heart for Jones the day after the ventricular assist devices were attached, but an organ was not readily found.

Gray said that the heart transplanted into Jones was “slightly larger than what would be ideal” but that, because of the difficulty in finding an organ, surgeons went ahead with the transplant.

Privacy Requested

The hospital would not release any information about the heart’s donor at the donor family’s request.

Two of the patient’s external devices, which pump air into the heart, were attached to Jones on Thursday, more than a week after an unidentified virus attacked his heart. The virus caused five cardiac arrests before doctors could attach the devices.

The virus that caused the boy’s heart to fail is inactive, Gray said, but there is a remote chance that it could affect the new heart.