John Ferrandino; Got Twice-Transplanted Heart

A San Pedro longshoreman who attracted national attention four months ago when he became the third person known to receive a heart from another heart transplant recipient, was buried Tuesday in Rancho Palos Verdes.

John Ferrandino, 43, died Thursday, the day he was admitted to Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Harbor City, a Kaiser Permanente spokeswoman said.

The cause of death was listed as cardiopulmonary arrest and other complications, but doctors were awaiting results of tissue tests to pinpoint why he died.

His funeral drew hundreds of longshoremen and other mourners to Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church in San Pedro, where Ferrandino grew up and raised his family. He was buried at Green Hills Memorial Park.

Ferrandino, the father of two, had been close to death with a failing heart June 20 when doctors at UCLA Medical Center decided on an unusual type of transplant surgery: giving him a new organ that had two previous owners.

Experts said the surgery appeared to mark the first time in the United States that a donated heart was given to one recipient and then another. They could recall only two other such cases, both in Europe, and they described the UCLA case as illustrative of the steps physicians may have to take to stem the chronic shortage of donor hearts.

Ferrandino’s heart originally belonged to a 20-year-old woman who died after a car accident. It was given to a man in his 40s who died of a brain hemorrhage 11 days later. It was then that doctors sewed the heart into Ferrandino’s chest.

A UCLA cardiac transplant physician who treated Ferrandino said Tuesday that he was surprised by his death.

“It sounds as if things went bad very quickly,” said Dr. Jon Kobashigawa, director of clinical heart transplant services at UCLA Medical Center.

Doctors had expected Ferrandino to live as long as typical heart transplant recipients. Statistics show that 85% of heart transplant patients ages 19 to 44 survive the first year after surgery, the highest success rate of any age group, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing in Richmond, Va.

Kobashigawa, who initially suggested reusing the heart to save Ferrandino, was not treating him at the time of his death.

Ferrandino was a health plan member with Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest health maintenance organization, which sends area patients needing heart transplants to UCLA for surgery. Ferrandino’s care was later transferred back to Kaiser’s doctors.

Kit Niemeyer, a Kaiser spokeswoman, said she could not release complete details of Ferrandino’s death because of patient confidentiality and the pending tests.