Man who received boy’s heart dies
A PATIENT who received the heart of a 12-year-old car crash victim after years of waiting for a transplant has died.
The 57-year-old man had been transplanted with the heart of Arda Okur, who died on October 12 after succumbing to serious injuries sustained in a road traffic accident 20 days earlier.
However, despite what doctors described as a “successful” transplant operation at Lefkoşa Dr Burhan Nalbantoğlu State Hospital, Mr Gökalp passed away on Wednesday, just two weeks after the operation.
In a statement to the Turkish News Agency Cyprus (Tak), cardiovascular surgery specialist Dr Hasan Birtan noted that the condition of the patient, who had been moved from the intensive care unit to a “normal ward” as he was improving, “suddenly deteriorated”.
Dr Birtan, who was part of the team that performed the transplant operation, said: “He was a patient who lived with an artificial heart, who we had been monitoring for seven years.
“When a suitable heart was found, he was taken into surgery. Both the operation and the intensive care period went very well.
“He was then moved to a normal ward. He began to walk, eat and had started to return to his normal life without any devices.
“It is uncommon for a patient who is scheduled to be discharged in the next 15 days to die suddenly. We predict that he had an embolism.
“We succeeded at the hard part but failed the easy part. Our team is very sad.”
Two other patients in the TRNC, also in their 50s, received Arda Okur’s kidneys, while his liver was sent to Turkey for transplantation, after his family gave their permission for his organs to be donated.