Orlando Sentinel | Jon Silman, Miami Herald
MIAMI— The story is the stuff of legends, South Florida lore.
On Thanksgiving Day, 1986, transplant surgeon, Dr. Hooshang Bolooki sat in an ambulance speeding down Interstate 95, clutching a plastic igloo cooler filled with crushed ice - and life.
A human heart from a Hollywood suicide victim. A tragedy for sure, but in this case, a tragedy begets a miracle.
At Jackson Memorial Hospital, a medical team waited with heart patient Mark Frye, then 27, who lay on a table with his chest cracked open, his diseased heart removed.
It would be the first heart transplant performed at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center, and anxiety was high.
It took about an hour to reattach the human heart. At the time, there was a 50 percent chance he would make it past five years, said cardiologist Eduardo De Marchena, who was among the doctors at the hospital that day.
Read more: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/mh-first-heart-transplant-patient-20111201,0,6646892.story
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