When the doctor is the patient: UW Health cardiologist gets rare heart-kidney transplant | Local News | madison.com

Dr. Matt Wolff, a health cardiologist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, performed a rare heart-kidney transplant in October. He suffered from hereditary heart disease, which shortened the lives of many family members, including his father, who passed away at the age of 50. He said: "I'm 60 years old, so I do a lot better than the odds." An art studio in a shed in his home near Cross Plains.

Dr. Matt Wolff became a cardiologist, treating heart disease, only to learn that he had hereditary heart disease, which could cause people to die suddenly like his father was 50.

After many years as director of cardiology at UW Health, after replacing heart valves and performing angioplasty to remove blocked arteries, Wolff himself underwent a major operation: a heart-kidney transplant.

In October of this year, Wolf, now 60, obtained a heart and kidney from a donor of the same deceased. He is one of them

.

He tried to avoid this step through diet, exercise, drugs, implanting equipment and studying family history, and found out that his great-grandfather had died of a heart attack in 1900. In 1900, other relatives, both male and female, died here in the 30s and 40s.

Wolf said: "I work hard and don't have to transplant, but there is no genetics to escape."

His heart problem caused him to stop performing the operation in October 2019, only visit the clinic and start half-time work. But with a new heart and kidney, he returned to the Ice Age Trail hike near his home in the north of Cross Plains, where he grew organic vegetables. He hopes to work part-time this spring.

He said: "As far as I know, these organs are working well." "I have begun to think about all the things I can't do now."

When Wolff's father died of heart failure and arrhythmia in 1978, the doctor told his family that the condition was not hereditary. Wolfe is 18 years old and a freshman at Worcester College in Southern Cleveland, not far from his hometown of Tiffin, Ohio.

He majored in biology and attended Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Three months after the heart and kidney transplant, Wolf received an examination from the UW Hospital from Dr. Farhad Aziz (right) and Dr. Curtis Swanson. He said, "It's weird to lie on the table on the other side." "You kind of want to tell them,'Go over there, man.'" 

While living at the 27-year-old Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins), he decided to specialize in cardiology. He became interested in the complicated blood flow of the heart and was attracted to operations that would allow people to recover quickly. At least without knowing it, he was not bothered by his father's fatal heart disease.

He said: "If it is an influence, it is a subconscious influence."

Wolfe was swimming in the Chesapeake Bay when he was 29 years old. He felt an irregular heartbeat and a fast heartbeat. He wondered if it was related to his father's illness. He said: "It did light up a small light bulb in my brain."

In his early 30s, he had more irregular heartbeats or atrial fibrillation. He read about a family with hereditary dilated cardiomyopathy, where the heart muscle becomes weak and swollen, which hinders blood flow and can cause heartbeat. Irregular beating can be fatal.

Soon, he was convinced that he and a young family member who died of heart disease had the same disease. He read the life story of his grandmother and said that her father died in 1900 of "greasy", an old-fashioned term for swelling due to excess fluid. This disease is called edema today and is usually caused by heart disease.

Researchers in Boston tested Wolfe’s family and four other people and identified a genetic mutation that gives each child of the affected parent a 50% chance of developing hereditary dilated cardiomyopathy. This study traces the inheritance of the Wolf family back to his great-grandfather.

Dr. Matt Wolff walked to the vicinity of his home north of Cross Plains. Before the hereditary heart disease caused heart failure and abnormal heart rhythm, he had to exercise regularly, which was life-threatening, so he needed a heart and kidney transplant. He said that he feels much better today.

Be a researcher

, Wolfe is listed as a co-author.

In the genealogy diagram of this article, the shadows and shadow boxes represent the shadows of people affected by this condition, while the unshaded squares and circles are blank. Wolff's square is half-shaded-he said he insisted on frustrating the main author-because he didn't believe he had all the signs.

He said: "For me, this is very stubborn." "I was not fully prepared to admit it at the time. Psychologically, it was a bit of a struggle."

By the time the paper was published, Wolf had been working at UW Health for nearly 7 years. Before transferring to UnityPoint Health-Meriter for a while and returning to UW, he became the director of the cardiology department.

His arrhythmia episodes are rare but dangerous. He recalled: "I had to lie on the floor, put my feet on the chair, pull the phone down with the wire, and call me." "I'm going to die."

Wolf went to UW Health's transplant clinic to accept his appointment. He is one of five people in UW Hospital, and 289 patients in the country underwent heart and kidney transplants last year.

He received a pacemaker to resist the abnormal heart rhythm. The device has been upgraded to an implantable defibrillator, which can provide corrective shocks when it senses life-threatening irregular rhythms.

He took a variety of drugs for his heart disease, including an experimental drug that he first tested in mice in the laboratory. The drugs developed by Array Biopharma (now part of Pfizer) are located in

He often exercises, jogging and doing yoga. He and his wife Kelly are the marketing directors of the Organic Valley in La Farge. They mainly eat vegetables grown in their large gardens, which are very beneficial to the heart health of the Mediterranean diet. .

But by last summer, Wolf could no longer restrain the fate of his ancestors. His weak heart prevents him from gardening or doing yoga. He said: "It's hard to go up the stairs."

Life-threatening abnormal heart rhythms began to appear more frequently, and drugs no longer worked. There was also no procedure to burn some of his heart tissue in an attempt to stop the wrong electrical signal.

After being hospitalized on October 12, Wolfe was included in the transplant list. While he was waiting, the doctor inserted a balloon pump in his aorta to help his sick heart continue to pump blood, a procedure he performed on other people.

Dr. Jason Smith, a heart transplant surgeon at UW Health, said: "We are not sure whether he can be transplanted." "He is about to get sick and can still survive."

Multiple organ transplants are rare but still increasing. Last year, 289 heart and kidney transplants were performed nationwide, more than double the number five years ago and nearly five times the number in 2010.

Smith

Other transplant combinations include kidney liver, kidney pancreas and heart lung. Compared with single-organ transplantation, each is relatively rare.

Smith said it is difficult to obtain two suitable organs from the same donor. Using organs from different donors makes the recipient's immune system more likely to reject them. Smith said that drugs used in one organ after transplantation may be bad for another organ, and patients who need more than one organ tend to get sick, so the risk of surgery is higher.

Dr. Dixon Kaufman, director of the University of Washington Health Transplant Center, said: "It took a long time to figure out who is the right person."

Kaufman

Wolf's heart problem caused his kidney failure, making him a candidate for a dual transplant.

On October 23, the heart and kidney of the same donor became available, and Wolff matched. Smith and his team transplanted the heart early the next morning, and then Kaufman and his team implanted the kidney into the kidney. Wolf was released on election day on November 3.

Recovering from the transplant has brought him new prospects.

Previously, due to poor health and major maintenance of the property, he and Kelly believed they needed to downsize. Now they plan to live for another five years.

Wolf seems unable to continue the European trip, hiking and rafting trips west with his three daughters. Now, he hopes to join again after the COVID-19 pandemic ends.

Wolf said: "I almost stopped planning for the future." "Now I have realized that I will be able to do all of this."

His daughter is between 26 and 33 years old and lives in Portland, Oregon. Following strict coronavirus precautions, they visited for two months after the transplant. He declined to say whether any of them had heart disease.

Before Wolfe and his wife Kelly underwent a heart and kidney transplant in October, they thought they would not be able to continue living in houses and large amounts of property near Cross Plains. Now they decided to stay.

Wolf has adjusted to only see outpatients and has not undergone emergency adrenaline surgery, but has not received a call late at night. He said that his transplantation operation has given him a deeper understanding of the patient's experience, from taking difficult drug combinations to filling out complicated forms, and sometimes even causing medical service providers to miss out on time.

Wolff said: "When you are on the receiving end, some inefficiencies in the medical service become more obvious," Wolff said, adding that his care is generally excellent.

He knew nothing about the organ donor, including the person’s gender or age. But he understands what happened, just like any deceased donor transplant. In order to keep him alive, someone had to die-probably suddenly and unexpectedly in a sad family.

In a letter to the donor’s family this month, Wolfe expressed his condolences for their loss and his appreciation for the gift of life.

He wrote: "In the terrible and unexpected sadness I imagined, your kindness, selflessness, and generosity aroused inspiration."

He wrote that his transplant is a gift, "I will continue to be grateful every day, I will do my best, and I will work hard to repay."

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David Wahlberg is a health and medical reporter for the Wisconsin State Daily.

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