A 33-year-old Minnesota man is back doing many of the things he loves, including biking and walking, just nine months after a full multi-organ transplant was performed on him at Cleveland Clinic to treat a rare cancer.
In 2019, Andy Voge was diagnosed with with a rare form of appendix cancer called pseudomyxoma peritonei (PMP). PMP originates as a tumor in the appendix, then ruptures, causing its jelly-like content to spread to other digestive organs. Andy had surgery performed at the Mayo Clinic and seemed to be making great progress in his recovery. But by 2020, Andy's tumor returned and his health began to decline rapidly.
At the end of January 2021, Voge was hospitalized again due to a hole in his bowel. “They wanted to go in and operate, but they just couldn’t get to the bowel,” he told NBC's Kate Snow on the TODAY Show. “That’s when my doctor told me I had about a 50-50 shot of making it through that night."
Andy did make it through the night, but was not expected to have much longer to live. Maybe six months.
Meanwhile, Cleveland Clinic welcomed a new specialist in 2020. Dr. Anil Vaidya became the co-director of the Clinic's Intestinal Transplant Program. In England, he had performed the world’s first modified multi-organ transplant (excluding the liver) to treat a patient with PMP who had exhausted all other management strategies.
Now in Cleveland in 2021, Dr. Vaidya had happened to speak to Andy Voge's doctor at the Mayo Clinic about his case.
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