Bench Surgery

In November of 2000, Dr. Michael J. Reardon performed an amazing surgery on 57 year-old Joanne Minnich. She had four life-threatening tumors in her heart that had to be removed immediately. The surgeon removed her heart, placed it on ice and removed the tumors. Then he rebuilt it with parts of a cow’s heart that were chemically treated to keep it from being rejected and put it back. That next Christmas Joanne spent with her family at home.

Procedures like this are called bench surgeries or auto-transplants. Only about 50 bench heart surgeries had been performed by 2002.

Bench surgeries, although presently uncommon, have some major benefits over organ transplants. With bench surgery, the patient avoids many of the dilemmas associated with transplants. For one, they do not need to find an organ donor (their own organ will be transplanted once it has been repaired). Many people needing organ transplants never make it to the surgery because they can’t find a match.

In addition, many organ transplants fail because the patient’s immune system realizes that the new organ doesn’t “belong in its territory”. In these scenarios, cells of the immune system set out to destroy it. Special anti-rejection drugs are given to the patient so there is less chance this will happen, but it is still frequent.

Bench surgeries do not require the patient to take any anti-rejection drugs. This truly is a benefit for cancer patients because anti-rejection drugs suppress their immune system. With a suppressed immune system, any remaining cancer cells will likely have the opportunity to grow into a new tumor.

For these reasons, bench surgeries hold promise for the future.