A record of sorts may have been set at Israeli hospitals Monday night, when a single donor provided a heart and liver for transplant surgery.
The donor, an unnamed Austrian tourist, was fatally injured in a traffic accident. His family agreed to donate his organs to save lives.
Yehezkel Drucker, 49, of Ramat Gan, was reported Tuesday morning to be recovering satisfactorily at Hadassah University Hospital in Ein Kerem, following a successful heart transplant.
The liver transplant was performed on Maurice Athlizada, 50, of Moshav Magdiel. He was reported in critical condition Tuesday night at Beilinson Hospital in Petach Tikva, after a 13-hour operation.
Athlizada, the father of three young children, suffered complications and was taken directly from the operating theater to an intensive-care unit.
Liver transplants are among the most complicated and dangerous to perform. Only two have been done previously in Israel, both at Rambam Hospital in Haifa. Both failed.
The surgeon in those cases was American-trained Dr. Yigal Kamm, who had performed liver transplants in the United States. He returned to practice there because of the lack of liver donors in Israel.
The operation was the first of its kind at Beilinson since the Health Ministry licensed it to do liver transplants several months ago.
The outlook is much better for Drucker, a father of two. He received the heart transplant after a week under treatment at the Hadassah-Ein Kerem intensive-care unit.
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