As surgery chairman at the University of Arizona, Dr. Rainer Gruessner expanded the transplant program to include specialized procedures that have changed lives.
Among the 61 patients who had the islet-cell transplant at UA Medical Center was Jill Long of Appleton, Wis., who chose the Tucson program after considering others, including the University of Minnesota.
“Minnesota was always regarded as the top in the U.S. I’d say Arizona was a close second, and it was getting a reputation,” said Long, who runs a website for people with pancreatitis called The Pancreas Project and also maintains a Facebook page for patients.
Since the procedure is so rare, it’s hard to find doctors for follow-up care, she said.
“Where are we supposed to go now? Most doctors won’t touch me with a 10-foot pole,” she said.
The transplant requires patients stay in Tucson for six weeks. Long and her husband rented an apartment in the Foothills, went to the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show and explored the city. She’s been here four times since her surgery, but now needs to find another place for continuing care.
“It took me five years to get diagnosed,” she said. “I was living on saltines and weighed less than 100 pounds. I met with the (UA Medical Center) team and I had never felt more comfortable and accepted. How many people have their doctors’ cellphone numbers on their phone? I can call them any time of day or night. You don’t get doctors like that.”
Sahuarita resident and former UA Medical Center patient Leslie Richter in 2009 became the first in the state to receive a small-bowel transplant. Her surgery was unique because she had a living donor — her older sister, who donated 6 feet of her small intestine.
Gruessner standardized the technique of living-donor intestinal transplants in the 1990s as vice chairman of the surgery department at the University of Minnesota. Richter’s nine-hour surgery was the first he’d done in Arizona.
Before her surgery Richter faced a lifetime of receiving sustenance via IV. She had been living that way for eight months when she had her surgery and said the transplant completely changed her life. She can now eat and drink on her own.
“The surgery I received was a delicate one,” Richter said. “My life depended not just on good doctors but great ones …. Without Dr. Gruessner’s exceptional skills I would have had a shortened life where I couldn’t eat food or drink.”
