One Recipient Tracks Another’s Progress: ‘I’m Rooting for Him’

One of Pennsylvania’s two artificial heart recipients said he was “rooting” for the other Saturday as they waited for human organ transplants, hospital officials said.

Thomas J. Gaidosh, 47, of Sutersville, who received a Jarvik-7 heart Thursday, remained in critical condition in Presbyterian-University Hospital in Pittsburgh after an “uneventful night,” officials said.

“We understand that the Gaidosh family is visiting him every two hours and that he is awake more and more,” hospital spokeswoman Isabelle Davis said. “He can’t speak because he still has mechanical assistance to breathe.”

She said surgeons were “very encouraged” by his progress.

A Good Luck Wish

Meanwhile, at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Anthony Mandia, a Philadelphia recreation worker who became the first person to receive the Penn State heart on Oct. 18, wished Gaidosh good luck.

“When I told him (Mandia) of Mr. Gaidosh in Pittsburgh, he asked: ‘How’s his heart doing? Tell him I’m rooting for him,’ ” Dr. John Burnside, a hospital spokesman, said.

Burnside said Mandia was eager for a change of scenery, asked for “a room with a view” and mentioned that he would like to go home to wait for a human heart.

Mandia, 44, was in critical but stable condition Saturday “and improving daily,” Burnside said, adding that doctors were not worried that they had not found a suitable donor heart.

Donor Heart Too Small

But officials at Presbyterian-University Hospital were concerned that Gaidosh’s large frame--6-foot-3 and 220 pounds--will complicate their search for a human heart.