Ohio’s First Adult Intestinal Transplant

Cleveland Clinic surgeons led by Cristiano Quintini, MD, performed Ohio’s first adult intestinal transplant. The patient was a 47-year-old man from Painesville, Ohio, 
suffering from short bowel syndrome resulting from multiple treatments for Crohn’s disease. Although able to eat, he required parenteral nutrition for more than a decade due to an inability to properly absorb nutrients that in turn caused liver failure. The 10-hour operation involved 50 specialists, nurses and support personnel. The surgical team included John Fung, MD, PhD, chair of General Surgery and Transplant Center, and Bijan Eghtesad, MD, as well as Charles Miller, MD, director of Liver Transplantation and Koji Hashimoto, MD, PhD, who prepared the donor intestine for implantation. The addition of intestinal transplant gives Cleveland Clinic the most comprehensive transplant program in the country.