inthe know
Did you know
Heart transplant
recipients in the
region were common
when heart transplants
were not
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I
f you lived in Peters Township in the 1970s, you might not
realize that people you may have bumped shoulders with
at the corner store were at the forefront of the emerging
science of heart transplantation. While the actual science was
taking place at Stanford Hospital on the west coast, recipients
of the hearts being transplanted were uncommonly common
in the Pittsburgh region.
Robert Kaskie of Canonsburg and Jim Mercuri of Castle
Shannon both were recipients of new hearts from Stanford
doctors. In today’s age, where full face transplants grab the
headlines and heart transplants are all but taken for granted,
Kaskie and Mercuri were pioneers thrust by fate into the
hands of surgeons harnessing a technique that was less than a
decade old at the time, and decades yet from perfection.
The first adult human heart transplant took place in
1968. Kaskie and Mercuri both received hearts in 1977, and
while Mercuri would survive for another 20 years, Kaskie
succumbed to a pneumonia brought on by anti-rejection
medications less than seven months after his operation.
At the time, such outcomes were common, with Mercuri’s
odds of living three years after the surgery being just one in
four. The longest-living heart transplant recipient of the day
survived eight years after her transplant.
As Mercuri was coming home from California, another
candidate for the life-saving surgery from Charleroi was
awaiting her clearances from doctors. Mercuri moved to
Bethel Park, remarried, fathered a daughter, adopted his
wife’s son, David, and lived until December 3, 1997, when
cancer claimed him.
Mercuri’s daughter, Alicia, said that while Mercuri was an
organ donor, cancer had spread throughout his entire body,
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