Steve Jobs’ outlook good after liver transplant, doc says

Published 10:04 pm Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs appears to be a step closer to returning to work, as a doctor gave him an “excellent prognosis” after he received a liver transplant at a Tennessee hospital.

Dr. James Eason made the disclosure with Jobs’ permission. Jobs has been on a medical leave since January. Apple didn’t discuss or even acknowledge the transplant, saying only that Jobs is looking forward to returning to Apple — which he started in 1976 — at the end of June.

“He received a liver transplant because he was … the sickest patient on the waiting list at the time a donor organ became available,” Eason said in a statement Tuesday night.

A celebrity like Apple CEO Steve Jobs scores a rare organ transplant and the world wonders: Did he game the system? The rich have plenty of advantages that others don’t. But winning the “transplant lottery” involves more than the size of your wallet — and true medical need.

Jobs transplant put him among the lucky 6,500 or so Americans each year who get these operations. Nearly 16,000 others are waiting now for such a chance.

No one can buy a transplant — that’s against federal law. And no one is suggesting that Jobs or the Memphis doctors who treated him bent any rules to show him favor. The hospital said he was the sickest person waiting for a liver when one became available.

However, people who understand how the transplant system works, and who have the money to make the most of what they learn, have a leg up on getting the body part they need.

An Internet database — the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients — gives average wait times, success rates and other details on every transplant program in the nation.

“Anyone can go to that Web site and see which transplant centers transplant quicker than others,” said Dr. Anthony D’Alessandro, liver transplant chief at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Jobs, who lives in Palo Alto, Calif., was able to get on a shorter waiting list, in Tennessee.

Here’s where money comes in.

To get on a transplant center’s list, a prospective patient must go there, be evaluated by the staff and have tests to confirm medical need. If accepted, the patient must be able to get to that center within seven or eight hours if an organ becomes available. That means renting or buying a place nearby or being able to afford a private jet, or $3,000 to $5,000 for a chartered plane, to fly in on short notice.

People also can get on as many wait lists as they like as long as they can travel there and meet the terms.

Jobs, 54, had surgery in 2004 for a rare form of pancreatic cancer, an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. Jobs said afterward that he was cured. However, his health made headlines last summer, when reporters at a company conference saw he had lost a lot of weight.

In January, Jobs said he was suffering from an easily treatable hormone imbalance and would remain CEO. Less than two weeks later, he said his medical problems were more complex, and that he would take a medical leave of absence through June, leaving Apple’s chief operating officer, Tim Cook, to run day-to-day operations of the Cupertino, California-based firm.