Joanne Minnich; Survived Surgery on Heart Removed From Her Body

Joanne Minnich, the first woman to successfully have her heart surgically removed and operated on outside her body, has died. She was 57.

Minnich, who lived in Carmel, N.Y., died Thursday after a long battle with cancer, said her husband, William.

In April 2000, Joanne Minnich found that she had a rare form of cancer called fibrous histiocytoma sarcoma and underwent surgery to remove it. However, the cancer recurred, and Minnich, a business manager with three grown children, began searching for alternative treatments after hearing the dire prognosis of local physicians.

Her search took her onto the Internet, where the trail eventually led to Dr. Michael J. Reardon, a surgeon at the Methodist DeBakey Heart Center in Houston and a professor of surgery at Baylor University’s College of Medicine.

Reardon had performed a number of what are called bench surgeries or auto-transplants. A few bench surgeries had been performed on hearts, but usually only to repair valves or to ease the pain of angina. Generally, such surgeries had been performed on kidneys.

But the type of surgery that Minnich needed was risky: Only one other person had survived the procedure.

Last November, doctors in Houston operating on Minnich temporarily removed her heart, placed it in an ice-filled bowl, cut out three rapidly growing tumors, rebuilt it using parts of a cow’s heart, and returned the repaired organ.

A heart-lung machine took over the function of Minnich’s diseased heart for the approximately 45 minutes it was out of her body. The team would have had a maximum of six hours, the length of time a heart can survive outside the body.

Doctors said the malignant growths, one as large as a lemon, were on the wall of her heart’s left atrium and could have killed Minnich in as little as two weeks if left unchecked.

Minnich had said the surgery was the only way she had a chance at life.

“I’m just happy to be where I am, with my family around me,” Minnich said after the operation last year.