Faculty Bibliography

It is a long shot for her to recover, said Dr. Robert Robbins, of the Heart-Lung and Lung Transplantation Program at Stanford University. Unlike [Jesica Santillan], most patients who receive second heart transplants do so because their immune systems reject the donor organs. Because the heart and lungs Jesica received came from a person with a mismatched blood type, her body mounted a furious attack on the mismatched organs. The blood type incompatibility is generally more serious in transplanting lungs because lung tissue has a propensity to react very strongly immunologically, the doctors said. Dr. Mehmet Oz, a heart surgeon at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, said that if Jesica survived, her chances for serious long- term medical problems like infection and immunological disorders would be about 80 percent. Still, Jesica's parents, who are from Mexico, celebrated that their daughter had been given a second chance when new organs from a donor with matching type O blood were found Wednesday. Outside the hospital here in Durham, Jesica's parents hugged in front of a growing crowd of reporters. The couple looked exhausted. We are blessed, her mother, Magdalena, said

Once the organs arrived, Ms. [Jesica Santillan]'s heart and lungs were removed and the donor organs were implanted. Ms. Santillan was removed from the heart-lung bypass machine and the organs functioned well for 30 or 40 minutes. They began to fail and Ms. Santillan was returned to the machine. Moments later, the operating room heard the worst possible news from the transplant immunology laboratory: ''the transplant was ABO incompatible with the recipient.'' Ms. Santillan's condition was stabilized and she was moved to the pediatric intensive care unit. Because the designated recipient's condition was not suitable for transplant surgery, Dr. [James Jaggers] asked about the availability of a heart and lungs for Ms. Santillan as well as the status of the donor's lungs. The coordinator offered the heart and lungs to Dr. [R. Duane Davis] for an adult patient. Dr. Davis declined because the organs were incompatible in size for an adult

The growing Latino community in this area seems especially moved. The new Mexican Consulate in nearby Raleigh is working to connect the Santillans with relatives in Mexico. Desperate to help their daughter, the Santillans paid a smuggler to take them from Guadalajara to America three years ago. Ms. [Jesica Santillan] suffers from cardio restrictive cardiomyopathy, a condition of an enlarged and weakened heart and faulty lungs. The Santillans came to North Carolina because they heard it had good health care. The community here has been following Ms. Santillan's quest for a new heart since shortly after she arrived. Mack Mahoney, a 55-year-old Texas home builder, got things started. Mr. Mahoney was so moved when he read a newspaper article about the sick girl, who lived in a trailer with no windows, that he founded a charity to build houses for free to raise money for her surgery. He called it Jesica's Hope Chest and got Ms. Santillan on an organ donation list. Mack Mahoney, who led a fund-raising drive to pay for Jesica Santillan's medical care, yesterday with Ms. Santillan's cousin America Santillan. (Associated Press); Dr. [William Fulkerson], chief executive of Duke University Hospital, and Dr. [Karen Frush], director of children's services, said yesterday that Jesica Santillan had suffered ''severe and irreversible brain damage.'' (Reuters)

Unlike [Jesica Santillan], most patients who receive second heart transplants do so because their immune systems reject the donor organs. Because the heart and lungs Jesica received came from a person with a mismatched blood type, her body mounted a monster attack on the mismatched organs. Still, Jesica's parents, Melecio and Magdalena, who are from Mexico, celebrated that their daughter, 5 foot 2 and 80 pounds, had been given a second chance when new organs from a donor with matching Type O blood were found late Wednesday. As word of Jesica's plight spread, so did the hunt for organs. Duke Hospital officials pushed all the connections they had, not because of their mistake, they said, but because Jesica's condition was so dire. And worsening

Officials at Duke University Hospital admitted today that they made several mistakes when doctors inserted the wrong organs on Feb. 7. Ms. Santillan has Type O blood. The transplanted organs were Type A. The chief surgeon did not ask when he received the heart and lungs from an organ bank if they matched the patient. As word of Ms. Santillan's plight spread, so did the hunt for organs. Duke University Hospital officials pushed all the connections they had, not because of their mistake, they said, but because Ms. Santillan's condition was so dire. And worsening. At Duke University Hospital on Wednesday, Federico Santillan led relatives in prayer for his niece [Jesica Santillan]. (Susana Vera/The News & Observer); Ms. Santillan's cousin Beatriz Vazquez, home in Guadalajara, Mexico, lighted a candle for her yesterday, while Dr. [Duane Davis], right, and Dr. [William Fulkerson] held a news conference at Duke University Hospital. (Photographs by Associated Press)(pg. A23)

As word of [Jesica Santillan]'s plight spread, so did the hunt for organs. Duke Hospital officials pushed all the connections they had, not because of their mistake, they said, but because Santillan's condition was so dire. And worsening

The same could be said of many of the AIDS scientists at the 10th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, where Dr. [Sebastian Lucas] presented a series of stunning, if grim, autopsy photographs. Even though these molecular biologists, statisticians and other scientists are a vital part of the AIDS research team, they do not take care of patients, so they seldom witness the damage that H.I.V. can inflict on various organs and tissues. By the same token, doctors practicing today see autopsy results much less often than did their counterparts a few decades ago because far fewer autopsies are now being done. By contrast, Dr. Lucas has gained an extraordinary perspective on AIDS from having performed 1,000 autopsies on H.I.V. patients in England and Africa. He has found many ways to apply the classic credo of pathology: to learn from the dead to heal the living. Photographs are effective educational tools in medicine as they are in other fields. So Dr. Lucas went on to show slides of other H.I.V.-related conditions like toxoplasmosis, tuberculosis, pneumocystis pneumonia and H.I.V. nephropathy, a kidney disease that is common in blacks

'The Piano Tuner' by Daniel Mason is reviewed.