Why should you donate your organs?

A 30-year survivor of a heart transplant is encouraging people to sign their driver’s license to be an organ donor.

Hank Mihelcic, 85, of Belleville, received a heart transplant in 1986 at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. He was 54 years old at the time and received a heart from a 16-year-old Wisconsin boy.

The head of the heart transplant program at Barnes, Dr. Gregory Ewald, says “anyone can be an organ donor.”

About 4,200 patients at any given time are waiting for a heart transplant in the United States. That’s why donors are always needed.

“The number of organ donors has not changed much over time, but many more patients are waiting for a heart transplant,” Ewald said. “We are doing about 2,300 heart transplants each year in the United States. Promoting donor awareness and having people who are willing to donate their organs can make a big impact.”

Hank waited only a few days for his new heart. Now, Ewald said the average wait for a patient may be several months or a few years. Doctors use Ventricular Assist Pumps or Left Ventricular Assist Devices, known as LVAD for short, to support about 70 percent of patients waiting for a transplant.

To receive a heart transplant, he said, a patient must have irreversible heart failure. A heart transplant is never the first option, Ewald said. First doctors try to help heart failure patients medically and fix heart valves to improve function.

Ewald said the biggest causes of heart failure are heart attacks and coronary heart disease. Other patients may have a cardiomyopathy.

Donated hearts are matched with recipients based on blood type, Ewald said. They also have to be matched based on size and other medical factors.

“The list doesn’t always go in numerical sequence as the donor might be better suited for the number three person on the list,” he said. “We try to match the best recipient to that particular donor to enhance the outcome.”

The first heart transplant was performed in 1967 by Dr. Christiaan Barnard in South Africa. At that time, Ewald said drugs weren’t available to stop organ rejection, so most hospitals stopped doing them.

When the anti-rejection drug Cyclosporine became available in the early 1980s heart transplant programs restarted.

“When Hank got his transplant, it was pretty unusual for patients to get transplanted,” Ewald said.

Though the surgical techniques used in heart transplants haven’t changed much in the last 30 years, knowledge about immunosuppression — or keeping the body from rejecting the new heart — has grown.

“Today we have better medications and new ways to suppress the immune system,” Ewald said. “I think that’s why people are doing better and living longer.”

To prolong the survival rate, Ewald said heart transplant recipients need to maintain a healthy lifestyle that includes exercise, eating right and taking their medication as prescribed.

“There’s a lot up to the patient,” he said. “They have to be fully invested and fully compliant with medications and have to be invested in the process to make it successful, and that’s one of the reasons Hank is still here 30 years later. He’s a guy who’s very compliant and calls us with issues and does all the things that a great patient would do to take care of themselves.”

This story was originally published August 5, 2016 at 12:40 PM with the headline "Why should you donate your organs?."