INDIANAPOLIS —
As two Sullivan County men went through a life-saving kidney transplant on Wednesday, a worldwide audience checked in online to follow the progress of the surgery and ask questions of the medical team via Indiana’s first “Twittercast” of a live surgery.
“So. Um. @iu_health is live-tweeting a kidney transplant. I am fascinated, amazed, and terrified all at the same time. WOW.” That tweet from a female follower of #calebskidney is representative of the positive feedback that the social media event received.
The transplant tweets came from Indiana University Health (@IU_Health) during the four hours of surgery performed at the Indianapolis hospital. In six to eight weeks, organ donor Colin Newton and recipient Caleb Johnson plan to be back to work — and enjoying the benefits of each having a healthy kidney. For now they are recuperating, and their doctors are celebrating the success of both the surgeries and the public education project.
“I hope it had a positive effect in terms of organ donation,” Dr. William Goggins said of the Twittercast following the kidney transplant. “It gets to a younger age group.”
IU Health estimated 500 tweets occurred Wednesday about the surgery, including those of the IU Health team, the re-tweets by followers, and the questions and answers. Before IU Health started the hashtag #calebskidney last week, the IU Health Twitter page had about 4,400 followers. Since first announcing #calebskidney, more than 1,000 new Twitter followers added IU_Health. Of that number, more than 500 started following the hashtag today during the course of the surgery.
IU Health public relations coordinator Gene Ford called the following “very exciting.”
Spreading information about live donor kidney transplants was the main goal of the tweets from surgeons William Goggins and Chandru Sundaram and others at IU Health.
“We hope not only to eventually have people who come forward to donate live organs,” Goggins said, “but that people also sign up to become organ donors on their driver’s license.”
The surgery itself was nothing new to the IU Health medical team.
Goggins (Caleb’s surgeon) is the surgical director for the kidney transplant program at IU Health. He was one of the surgeons involved in Indiana’s first kidney donation chain in 2009, which involved eight individuals and led to four people receiving lifesaving kidneys. Last month, Goggins performed his 1,000th kidney transplant since joining IU Health eight years ago. Caleb’s transplant was the 93rd for Goggins this year.
“We do a lot of them, and if you do it a lot, you get good at it,” Goggins said, noting that Caleb was doing “sensationally well” after the surgery and that his new kidney was already making urine.
Colin’s surgeon — Sundaram — is a professor and the director of minimally invasive surgery in the IU School of Medicine Department of Urology. Sundaram performed the first urologic robotic surgery in Indiana in 2002. He directs the nationally recognized fellowship in endourology and laparoscopy and specializes in performing daVinci robot assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy for prostate cancer and minimally invasive kidney and adrenal surgery.
Kidney transplant medical director Tim Taber is a transplant nephrologist and the medical director for the kidney transplant program at IU Health.
Sundaram said that the improvements in immunosuppression drugs makes transplants more successful. The laparoscopic procedure to remove the live organ — resulting in less pain and recovery time for the donor — also has caused live donations to almost double, he said.
IU Health has averaged 190 to 220 kidney transplants a year for the past seven years, Goggins said, and of those, 80 to 95 each year are living donor transplants.
Caleb and Colin have been friends for almost five years. When Colin, a graduate of Terre Haute South High School, learned that Caleb, a graduate of Sullivan High School, needed a kidney transplant due to a fast-acting condition that was causing his kidneys to fail, Colin agreed to go through testing to become a donor for his fishing and hunting buddy.
Both men also agreed to the Twittercast to spread the word about live organ donation and to hopefully get more people to sign up as donors. More than 90 percent of the 100,000-plus Americans waiting on the national transplant list are in need of a new kidney.
Ford said the hospital has been interested for some time in sharing information about transplant surgery through social media, and he was pleased Wednesday with the response from the public — which included input from prior organ donors and recipients.
A pastor in northwest Indiana stated that he “was a part of a kidney donation surgery 8 weeks ago @IU_Health, the same surgery as #calebskidney. I would do it again w/out any hesitation.”
When asked why he supported the Twittercast, the donor stated: “Tweeting is good because many don’t understand how advanced and safe the surgery is. More info will help more to donate.”
Tweets from the surgery are available online via www.Twitter.com.
Local & Bistate
Related Photos
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Success in the ER: IU Health kidney transplant surgeon Dr. William C. Goggins listens as partner and urological surgeon Dr. Chandra Sundaram discusses the kidney transplant that they performed during a press conference after the procedure Wednesday in Indianapolis.
Discussion
@IU_Health draws big audience for transplant
Live tweeting of surgery flooded with positive feedback
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