Dick Cheney's heart transplant at 71 spurs age debate
Dick Cheney received a heart transplant at the age of 71 after battling congestive heart failure.
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"You can't leapfrog the system," said Dr. Allen Taylor, cardiology chief at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. "It's a very regimented and fair process and heavily policed."
More than 3,100 Americans are waiting now for a new heart, and about 330 die each year before one becomes available. When one does, doctors check to see who is a good match and in highest medical need. The heart is offered locally, then regionally and finally nationally until a match is made.
Cheney's case reopens debate about whether rules should be changed to favor youth over age in giving out scarce organs. As it stands now, time on the waiting list, medical need and where you live determine the odds of scoring a new heart - not how many years you'll live to make use of it.
"The ethical issues are not that he had a transplant, but who didn't?" Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist at Scripps Health in La Jolla, Calif., wrote on Twitter.
Cheney received the new heart Saturday at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Va., the same place where he received an implanted heart pump that has kept him alive since July 2010. It appears he went on the transplant wait list around that time, 20 months ago.
Cheney had severe congestive heart failure and had suffered five heart attacks over the past 25 years. He's had countless procedures to keep him going - bypasses, artery-opening angioplasty, pacemakers and surgery on his legs. Yet he must have had a healthy liver and kidneys to qualify for a new heart, doctors said.
"We have done several patients hovering around age 70" although that's about "the upper limit" for a transplant, said Dr. Mariell Jessup, a University of Pennsylvania heart failure specialist and American Heart Association spokeswoman. "The fact he waited such a long time shows he didn't get any favors."
Jessup and Taylor spoke Sunday from the American College of Cardiology's annual conference in Chicago, where Cheney's treatment was a hot topic.
Patients can get on more than one transplant list if they can afford the medical tests that each center requires to ensure eligibility, and can afford to fly there on short notice if an organ becomes available. For example, the late Apple chief Steve Jobs was on a transplant list in Tennessee and received a new liver at a hospital there in 2009 even though he lived in California.
That's not done nearly as often with hearts as it is for livers or kidneys, said Dr. Samer Najjar, heart transplant chief at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. Each transplant center decides for itself how old a patient it will accept, he said.
"Most centers wouldn't put somebody on" at Cheney's age, said University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Art Caplan, who has testified before many panels on organ sharing issues.
"I've been arguing for a long time that the system should pay more attention to age because you'll get a better return on the gift" because younger people are more likely to live longer with a donor organ, Caplan said.
There have been other recent reports of successful heart transplants in septuagenarians.
In Canada, a man described as a home builder and philanthropist received a heart transplant when he was 79 at the University Hospital in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He lived for more than a decade with the organ, dying in 2010 at age 90.
In Texas, a 75-year-old retired veterinarian received a heart last year from a 61-year-old donor, but he had been a marathon runner and was presumably healthier than many of his peers.
Cheney will have to take daily medicines to prevent rejection of his new heart and go through rehabilitation to walk and return to normal living. He was former President George W. Bush's vice president for eight years, from 2001 until 2009.
About 5.8 million Americans suffer from heart failure and other 57,000 will die of it this year.
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I am sure that this person received the very best of care when he is in the hospital, all at the expense of the American taxpayer, that's you and me...me, I want my money back!. This guy isn't worth it.
With today's modern medicine, transplants and new medical breakthroughs on the way--many people will live to 100 or well past it--it's impossible for the government (thus taxpayers) to pay for this for everyone. Stand with Paul Ryan and all REPUBLICANS who realize that if you can't afford it, you don't deserve it--it's just that simple.
Workers who live to age 55 are at their peak. After that, they decline, and so their productivity. Like Rand Paul and his father, they realize the Ayn Rand principles--there have to be limits. Life isn't "fair" and not at any level. Those who have worked hard, invested wisely and "have earned" their money--they will be able to afford the bypass operations, transplants, organ tissue regeneration therapy, etc.
That's just the way it is. That is reality and thankfully the REPUBLICANS realize this. It sounds harsh but it is what we all are talking about, round and round and round--workers who don't save, invest and earn the money to pay for healthcare just won't be able to receive it. Besides, with all the people out of work, workers who live past 65 ARE the ones keeping the youth and young adults from getting into jobs.
In the end the stark reality is that the working class should not live past 55 or no more than 65. Now we can't just go out and shoot them, but if they get the healthcare they can afford--they won't live that long. Take Dick Cheney for example, he's 71, but he has worked hard, had some lucky breaks and earned a fortune, he can afford a heart transplant--God bless him.
For the average worker to have the idea that each one can have the same or even "deserve" the same kind of medical advantages are delusional. This isn't religion or God or any of that--it's just plain dollars and cents. Do we financially wreck the country or act wisely? Do we live in a fairy tale land or in reality?
It's time we wake up in this country and stop the "reality distortion" that these socialist/communist Democrats toss around. It is impossible for workers to get the same healthcare benefits of those who have reached the highest levels of business and industry, worked for it, saved / invested and can afford advanced health care like bypass surgery and transplants.
We have plenty of workers to replace those who will naturally pass away between ages 55 to 65. That's what the future will be and the REPUBLICANS realize this, especially Paul Ryan, God bless him! Ryan's budget process eliminates "equal" health care for everyone ad infinitum--it's just nuts to think we can do that.
We should have what Ryan and all republicans know--equal opportunity--but that doesn't mean "equal health care!" It would be no different than to say "everyone" (even workers) deserve mansions and Rolls Royce cars to drive. That guy on the street begging for a dollar had the same shot at wealth and the advantages of wealth as Paul Ryan, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney--he just didn't take hold of the opportunities he was given by being born in America.
Now that Obamacare is out of the way, the future will be simple: "No cash, no credit card or no insurance...NO HEALTH CARE." No freeloaders at county hospitals getting full code health care and paying nothing! That day is all but over.
Thank God for Paul Ryan, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney who are examples of people who will bring our government expenditures back into reality. The future is the end of the free healthcare, and social security welfare state!
Wouldchuk
a)inability to properly prosecute those truly guilty of terrorism since those cases were permanently coerced via 'torture'.
b)word torture being routinely used in same sentence as that which is U.S. global jurisprudence (you dumb SOB). It'll take us 3 full decades - if EVER - to rebound from this.
c) YOUR idea of 'political capital' which largely involved rewarding monetarily those of fealty/financial backing and then keeping this strictly under wraps. That this is actually deleterious concept for your country I cannot expect you to ever actually entertain.
d) YOUR insecurities driving US foreign policy when a more enlightened approach coupled with overwhelming world opionion/persuasion would have had the pissants capitulatory inside of a friggin' year. You again sir are quite dumb SOB but, yet again, congrats upon the new heart and increased life upon planet.
Here's a worthwhile thing to contemplate 'pon those gifted breaths' drawn. Gain a needed perspective as well.
Y'know sir ... you really are human offal and I do not use that term elsewhere EVER.
Sorry, I can see right through this disgusting person and do hope he meets his maker soon. America will be much better off without the likes of him.