Dr. Robert Montgomery: from transplant pioneer to heart transplant patient
- Robert Montgomery, a transplant surgeon at NYU Langone Health, waited nearly as long for his own heart transplant as many patients endure on terminal waiting lists, facing repeated...
- Montgomery's medical journey began in his youth, shaped by family tragedy.
- When medications failed to control his dangerous arrhythmias, Montgomery received an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, or CDI, to deliver lifesaving electrical shocks.
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Dr. Robert Montgomery, a transplant surgeon at NYU Langone Health, waited nearly as long for his own heart transplant as many patients endure on terminal waiting lists, facing repeated near-fatal cardiac arrests while trying to reform a scarce organ system, Estadão reported.
The Heart Failure Diagnosis In 1987
Montgomery’s medical journey began in his youth, shaped by family tragedy. When he was sixteen years old in 1976, his father died from dilated cardiomyopathy, a rare genetic disease that enlarges heart chambers and causes sudden cardiac arrest. Eleven years later in 1987, his thirty-five-year-old brother Rich died from the exact same condition. Medical evaluations soon revealed that Montgomery also carried the genetic mutation for dilated cardiomyopathy, casting immediate doubt on his grueling surgical residency at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
When medications failed to control his dangerous arrhythmias, Montgomery received an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, or CDI, to deliver lifesaving electrical shocks. Unsure if he could finish his surgical training, he moved to England to study immunology and earned a doctorate just in case surgery proved impossible. Returning to Johns Hopkins in 1992, he specialized in kidney transplants because heart donations were then far too rare to sustain a full-time surgical practice.
Innovations In Paired Kidney Exchanges
At Johns Hopkins, Montgomery developed a minimally invasive surgical technique for living kidney donors that successfully expanded pediatric transplant lists. In 2001, he established a pioneering program for paired kidney exchanges, organizing chain donations where anonymous altruistic donors triggered multiple compatible transplants. Described by colleagues as a surgical pioneer, he also helped push through federal legal changes to safely transplant kidneys from HIV-positive donors into HIV-positive recipients, establishing a new standard of care.
The NYU Langone Health system recruited Montgomery in 2016 to build a world-class transplant program in Manhattan. Despite his professional successes, his own heart continued to fail. While hiking in Patagonia in 2010, his implanted device successfully shocked him back to rhythm after a cardiac arrest. He suffered another severe cardiac arrest in Patagonia in 2017 requiring CPR in a moving vehicle, and experienced further arrests during a Broadway show in New York and at a medical conference in Italy in September 2018.
The Hepatitis C Heart Transplant In 2018
By September 2018, Montgomery was sick enough to enter the top tier of the national heart transplant waiting list at NYU Langone. On September 20, 2018, he received an offer for a heart from a donor who had died from a heroin overdose and was infected with hepatitis C. Despite skepticism from colleagues, Montgomery accepted the organ because hepatitis C could be cured with modern antiviral medications and he routinely encouraged his own patients to accept similar organs.
Following a six-hour operation, Montgomery received his new heart and returned to reviewing patient cases from his hospital bed just two days later. Recognizing that human organ donation alone would never supply enough organs for patients with organ failure, Montgomery turned his attention toward xenotransplantation. In the autumn of 2021, his team performed the first historical xenotransplant of a gene-edited pig kidney into a brain-dead human donor, demonstrating that the organ produced urine and filtered waste for 54 hours without hyperacute rejection.
Clinical Trials For Pig Organ Transplants
Although those patients ultimately succumbed to their underlying illnesses within months, the procedures proved that animal organs could function properly in human bodies without triggering catastrophic immune destruction.
The Food and Drug Administration authorized clinical trials for pig organ transplants in severely ill patients lacking other options, with Montgomery currently leading two of those trials. Today, Montgomery maintains an active routine, walking 3.2 kilometers to work every morning before six o’clock to protect his heart, travel with his family, and support transplant surgeons worldwide.