A CT man’s kidney is 109 years old. It’s still going strong and here’s why.
Jim Lee’s kidney — his only kidney — is 109 years old, and it’s still going strong.
It started out as his dad’s kidney, and in 1979, when Lee’s father, also named Jim, was 65, Lee underwent a transplant at age 26.
First, his brother Franky needed a transplant.
“And this was quite a number of years before I got my transplant,” Lee, who lives in Woodstock, said. “I was hoping to be the donor. And when they tested me, they discovered I had kidney problems also, and I couldn’t be the donor.”
Their sister Mary turned out to be a match and donated one of her kidneys to Franky.
“So eventually, I had some problems with my kidneys and they were causing high blood pressure,” Lee said. “So they took my kidneys out, and I was on dialysis for about seven months.”
Dr. Robert Schweitzer, founder of the transplant program at Hartford Hospital, now retired, performed the surgery.
“I was on my last last legs and I was dying,” Lee said.
Lee’s father, who was compatible but not a perfect match, came from Scotland to donate his kidney.
Since then, Lee has led a full life.
“I’ve traveled. I’ve driven all through Mexico,” he said. “I’ve visited the archaeological sites, drove across northern Canada. I’ve traveled all through the U.S. and Europe. I’m lucky. I’ve got two kids. … My wife and I are still married. She married me a couple of years before the transplant. … I’m a lucky man.”
“What’s unique here is that the father was somewhat advanced at age 65 when he gave a kidney,” Schweitzer said. “So what we’re looking at here is this kind of unusual occurrence where the kidney is now 109 years old and working well.”
Schweitzer said it’s become more common to accept older organ donors. “Back in the early stages of transplant, you wouldn’t have taken a kidney from a 65-year-old. But then again, criteria change and you learn more as time goes on,” he said.
Dr. Glyn Morgan, chief of surgical transplantation at Hartford Hospital, said there have been innovations in procuring organs and encouraging donors since 1979, and the surgery is usually laparoscopic or robotic, “but otherwise the surgery to perform the transplant is pretty much identical.”
“The medications are a little different,” he said. “And then the way we go about finding organs for people obviously. James had a living donor that he knew. But with the exchange programs that we have now, I would say more than half of the living donation cases we do, people do not know who their donor was, even though it was a living donor.”
One change is that the United Network for Organ Sharing, which arranges donations nationally, did not exist in 1979.
Morgan said Hartford Hospital recently performed its 200th transplant — almost 30 hearts, 35 livers and 140 kidneys — “the most ever at Hartford Hospital. So we’re very proud of our team and the work they do every day.”
Ed Stannard can be reached at estannard@courant.com.