Teri and John with Alyssa days after her surgery.
A Medical First, Years Later
20
by Katie Scarlett Brandt
In November 1989, Alyssa Smith lay sedated in a tiny bed at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Not yet 2 years old, she had undergone a surgery—the first of its kind—that drew an entire country’s attention.
a
Alyssa needed a new liver. However, at that time patients who
required liver transplants had no other option but to wait for cadaver donors. This created an especially long waiting list for infants because they could only receive organs from other young donors closer to their size; adult livers were too large to fit their bodies. a When Alyssa went on the transplant list in 1988—at less than a year old—the list had grown to 700 infants in the United States alone. Approximately one-third of all children, including half of all infants, placed on liver transplant waiting lists at the time died while waiting to get a donor organ, according to J. Richard Thistlethwaite, MD, a Medical Center surgeon and professor of transplant. Above from left: Jamie Harrison, RN and Barb Nihill, RN, who cared for Alyssa following the transplant. Right: Alyssa with her mother as a toddler after the surgery; with her brother, Ricky Smith; at high school graduation with her parents; and in her senior photo.
8 University of Chicago Medicine on the Midway