Transplant success at UTSW is a collaborative team effort

By Ron Durham

Dr. Sherrette Shaw-Fontenot, a Wichita Falls physician, is among the hundreds of patients who have undergone a successful heart transplant at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Her procedure was done in 2014, the same year that the organ transplant program reached a major milestone, when the surgical team performed its 500th heart transplant.

The program at UT Southwestern goes back 28 years, with the first one performed in 1988 by Dr. W. Steves Ring, Professor of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, on author/historian A.C. Greene, who later wrote a book about his transplant experience and his euphoria at getting a second chance at life. Throughout the years, UT Southwestern’s heart transplant program has consistently had survival rates significantly higher than the national average.

Dr. Mark Drazner
Dr. Mark Drazner

Dr. Mark Drazner, Medical Director of the Heart Failure, LVAD, and Cardiac Transplant Program at UT Southwestern, said success is never an accident. And to ensure the highest success rate possible, Dr. Drazner says the entire UT Southwestern heart transplant team works together very closely.

“Our program is very much team based: not only at the level of the physicians, but among all the health care professionals working to achieve the very best outcomes possible for our patients,” Dr. Drazner explained. “It is not unusual to have 20 health care professionals gathered to think and discuss the care for any individual patient. In terms of the transplant cardiologists on the team, we are fortunate to have six board-certified advanced heart failure/transplant cardiologists who work almost exclusively in this field. We are a close-knit group of physicians, who gather not only at the Thursday transplant selection committee, but weekly over lunch, as well as at other lecture presentations.

“The majority of our group has our academic offices immediately adjacent to each other, so we have frequent informal discussions. Finally, we have a very collaborative spirit, so we commonly call each other to bounce ideas off one another as we face difficult clinical decisions.”

The ultimate goal for any health care professional is to help patients lead a normal, fulfilling life following treatment, Dr. Drazner said.

“All the health care professionals involved in heart transplantation at UT Southwestern recognize how special it is participate in this incredible process,” he said. “It is even more gratifying knowing that we have helped a person recover her health, and she can then turn around and help all of her patients.

“Each person we help with a heart transplant can then go on and touch so many other people’s lives – whether it be a physician like Dr. Shaw-Fontenot, or a school teacher who educates the next generation, or a patient who becomes a strong advocate for organ donation, or a grandmother who now is able to help take care of her grandchildren. It truly is a privilege to be in this field.”

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Dr. Drazner holds the James M. Wooten Chair in Cardiology.