Gilliam, 32, suffered sudden cardiac arrest, an electrical malfunction of the heart that causes it to abruptly stop beating. The odds were stacked against him: Sudden cardiac arrest kills about 90% of those who experience it outside of a hospital. Survival depended on a chain of people acting within minutes.

A fellow dancer immediately started CPR. Other dancers ran out of the dance studio in search of an automated external defibrillator (AED) and found one at a nearby dentist’s office. A speech pathologist who had just completed CPR recertification and happened to be nearby used the AED to revive Gilliam’s heartbeat.

Paramedics then rushed Gilliam to the Cedars-Sinai Emergency Department, where he had another cardiac arrest. Surgeons placed Gilliam on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a form of advanced life support that temporarily took over the work of his heart, giving it time to recover—or, if necessary, bridging him to a transplant.

Cedars-Sinai experts say Gilliam’s case illustrates the importance of bystander CPR and quick medical response.

“The key to G’bari surviving sudden cardiac arrest was the fast-acting individuals who provided CPR, facilitated the use of an AED, and the Cedars-Sinai Emergency Department and cardiothoracic surgery teams who began ECMO within the hospital,” said Evan Kransdorf, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Cardiology in the Smidt Heart Institute and one member of Gilliam’s team of physicians and surgeons.

During cardiac arrest, blood stops circulating, explained Pedro Catarino, MD, a cardiothoracic surgeon in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai.

“The cells of the body, particularly the brain, will die within a few minutes without circulation,” Catarino said. “Gilliam’s heart was in and out of a rhythm that doesn’t sustain circulation, so the surgery team put him on emergency life support.”

Gilliam’s heart had ceased working, so he was listed in the organ donation system. After 12 days on life support, Gilliam received the news every transplant candidate hopes for: A donor heart had become available.

“Heart transplantation offers a new chance at life for patients like Gilliam,” Catarino said. “Gilliam is an athlete and can look forward to going back to his career with a heart that has a long lifespan.”

A pathology report showed Gilliam had a severe form of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, an inherited condition that causes the heart muscle to thicken so that the heart cannot contract and pump blood properly. The condition likely caused Gilliam’s sudden cardiac arrest, his medical experts say.

“Many people with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy don’t have symptoms, and athletes who are used to pushing themselves to be out of breath might not realize they have it,” Kransdorf said.

Geneticists in the Smidt Heart Institute tested samples of Gilliam’s heart and found that he had a genetic variant associated with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Experts encourage anyone with a family history to be screened for the condition, which affects about 1 in 500 people. Gilliam’s close family members are undergoing genetic testing.

Gilliam, whose credits include performing with Bad Bunny and on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, is now in physical therapy and preparing to return to dance.

“With dancing, it feels like I'm able to be my most authentic self and be the most vulnerable version of myself. It makes me feel alive,” he said.

Prior to his medical emergency, Gilliam’s schedule consisted of dance classes and gym training five days a week. He hopes to return to intense days and to continue teaching dance to elementary school students and choreographing dancers on TV and film sets. His mother and girlfriend are supporting him, as are many friends, family members and fellow dancers.

“What I learned from this experience is everyone should be trained in CPR because you never know what's going to happen,” Gilliam said. “Even more so, be a person of service. If you have the opportunity to help someone, do it.”

Read more from Cedars-Sinai Stories and Insights—Sudden Cardiac Arrest: Genetic Cause More Common in Younger People

Irene Kim, MD, director of the Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Transplant Center, partially credits the increase in liver transplants to the use of machine perfusion, a technology that circulates oxygen-rich, nutrient-rich, blood-based solution through donor organs until transplantation. Machine perfusion reduces graft dysfunction, allowing organs to be viable longer and improving physicians’ assessments of the organs ahead of transplantation—all of which has served to increase donor organ availability, Kim said.

A willingness to take on the most complex cases also helped drive the increase in lung transplants, according to Kim, as Cedars-Sinai is known for accepting high-risk cases that had been previously turned away by other institutions.

“We are committed to staying on the leading edge of transplant technology to ensure the best results for our patients, with survival outcomes that continue to meet or exceed the national average,” Kim said. “The more organs we can transplant, the more patients can receive a second chance at life. It’s a privilege to not only help these patients, but also to honor the donors who gave the ultimate gift of life.”

According to published data from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), 49,065 transplants occurred in the U.S. in 2025—more than in any other year. With records continuing to be set year over year, the OPTN has set an ambitious nationwide goal of 60,000 deceased donor transplants annually by the end of 2026.

New Records in Liver and Lung Transplants, Living Kidney Donors

The Department of Cardiac Surgery in the Smidt Heart Institute is the largest heart transplant center by volume in California, with clinical and surgical teams performing 114 adult heart transplants in 2025. The team, led by Joanna Chikwe, MD, chair of the Department of Cardiac Surgery, Fardad Esmailian, MD, surgical director of the Heart Transplant Program, and Jon Kobashigawa, MD, director of the Heart Transplant Program in the Department of Cardiology, has maintained an average of more than 100 heart transplants each year for the last 13 years, a current record in the U.S.

Surgical Director Dominick Megna, MD, and Medical Director Reinaldo Rampolla, MD, led the lung transplant team to perform 93 lung transplants in 2025—the most ever at Cedars-Sinai—surpassing its previous record of 88 in 2024. The Lung Transplant Program in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai continues to be the largest by volume in California and, in 2025, earned a place as a top 10 center by volume in the U.S.

The Liver Transplant Program also reached new milestones. The team, led by Kim, as surgical director, and Alexander Kuo, MD, professor of Medicine and medical director of the Liver Transplant Program, performed 145 liver transplants in 2025, exceeding the 2024 record of 136 transplants.

The Kidney Transplant Program team, led by Stanley Jordan, MD, medical director of the Comprehensive Transplant Center’s Human Leukocyte Antigen and Transplant Immunology Laboratory, and Tsuyoshi Todo, MD, surgical director, completed 324 transplants in 2025, including one pancreas-kidney transplant.

Notably, the team performed 80 living donor kidney transplants in 2025, setting a record for the number of living donor kidney transplants performed at Cedars-Sinai, with a more than 15% increase over the previously held record volume of 69 in 2013. This program, led by Steven Wisel, MD, and Reiad Najjar, MD, has transformed into a completely robotic surgical program.

“These achievements are a testament to the hardworking team at the Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Transplant Center,” said Kim, the Esther and Mark Schulman Chair in Surgery and Transplantation Medicine. “But none of these lifesaving procedures would be possible without the altruism of organ donors and their families. We are tremendously grateful to those who give the gift of life through organ donation.”

Read more from Cedars-Sinai Stories and Insights: After Lung Transplant, a Return to Running

Reid had been diagnosed with heart failure at Cedars-Sinai after experiencing fatigue and shortness of breath. The condition occurs when the heart is too weak to pump enough blood throughout the body, causing fluid to build up.

Reid told Good Morning America co-anchor Michael Strahan he initially dismissed his symptoms. He urged others—especially people of color—to seek medical care when something feels wrong.

“A lot of times, we don’t go because we don’t want the bad news, or we’re too busy just hustling, trying to make it from day to day,” Reid said. “And we … feel like we don’t got time, or we’ll get over it. Well, you might not.”

Jones told Good Morning America that during a follow-up visit, it was clear medications were no longer controlling Reid’s condition.

“He came in very swollen again,” she said, “and that is a little unusual in somebody who’s been started on treatment.”

DiChiacchio told Good Morning America that bloodwork revealed the condition was worsening and Reid needed an immediate heart transplant.

“So when we think about status for a heart transplant,” DiChiacchio said, “he was very high on that list because of how ill he was and really dealing with a kind of life or death situation.”

Days later a donor heart became available, and DiChiacchio and team successfully completed the transplant.

 Reid told Strahan he is grateful for a second chance at life.

“This thing is … a beautiful life,” he said. “And, you know, I wanna be around for it.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 6.7 million U.S. adults have heart failure. Risk factors include high blood pressure, diabetes and coronary artery disease, though regular exercise, adequate sleep and proper nutrition can lower risk.

Click here to watch the entire segment of Good Morning America.

The three-star quality rating from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons is the organization’s highest rating and recognizes Cedars-Sinai’s cardiac surgery team for its outstanding patient care and low rates of surgical and post-surgical complications.

“Our team has long held the highest recognitions for outcomes in coronary bypass, heart valve and transplant surgery,” said Joanna Chikwe, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Cardiac Surgery at Cedars-Sinai and the Irina and George Schaeffer Distinguished Chair in Cardiac Surgery. “This new rating is testament to our program’s quality and safety record across the entire spectrum of cardiac surgery.”

The Society of Thoracic Surgeons established a database in 1989 to track quality and patient safety. The database includes information voluntarily reported by most hospitals that perform heart surgery in the U.S.

The three-star rating for Cedars-Sinai is based on 1,567 adult cardiac surgery procedures performed between Jan. 1, 2022, and Dec. 31, 2024. These include coronary artery bypass grafting, aortic valve replacement, mitral valve repair and replacement, and combinations of these procedures. The metrics used to create the score apply to any heart surgery done at Cedars-Sinai during that time period, including patients who had multiple surgeries such as a coronary artery bypass grafting and aortic valve repair.

“The growth of the cardiac surgery team is truly remarkable,” said Shlomo Melmed, MB, ChB, executive vice president of Medicine and Health Sciences and dean of the Medical Faculty. “The team melds cutting-edge research and surgical skill to ensure the finest patient care outcomes.”   

The Smidt Heart Institute’s cardiology, heart and vascular surgery programs are rated in the top 10 in the U.S. and #1 in California by U.S. News & World Report.

Read more from the Cedars-Sinai Blog: After Heart Surgery, More to Love

Cedars-Sinai is among the top 10 transplant centers in the U.S. by volume, according to published data from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), and is known for accepting complex, high-risk cases.

“Behind every transplant is a patient who desperately waited for a chance at life,” said Irene Kim, MD, director of the Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Transplant Center. “It is the remarkable generosity of organ donors and their families that allowed our transplant teams to give 682 patients the chance to have longer and healthier lives.”

Cedars-Sinai’s organ transplant program has experienced a 64% year-over-year increase since 2017, when 415 transplants were performed. Over the last decade, its transplant volume has increased by 84%, from 371 in 2014 to 682 in 2024.

Multiple drivers are behind the upward trend in organ transplants at Cedars-Sinai and nationwide, said Kim, the Esther and Mark Schulman Chair in Surgery and Transplantation Medicine.

“Machine perfusion techniques are allowing us to use donor organs that may previously have been less ideal for transplant,” Kim said. “The technology helps preserve organs before transplantation, lengthening viability, improving assessment of organ function and contributing to improved patient outcomes.”

According to the OPTN, 48,149 transplants occurred in the U.S. in 2024—more than in any other year.

But the need for more organs remains significant: More than 100,000 people in the U.S. are on the organ transplant waiting list, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit organization that manages the U.S. organ transplant system.

Multiple collaborations among various sectors are underway to increase organ donations in an effort to reach a new national goal: 60,000 deceased donor transplants annually in the U.S. by the end of 2026.  

New Records in Heart, Liver and Lung Transplants

The Department of Cardiac Surgery in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai is home to the largest thoracic organ transplant program by volume in California and the second-largest heart transplant center by volume in the U.S. 

The team, including Joanna Chikwe, MD, chair of the Department of Cardiac Surgery, Fardad Esmailian, MD, surgical director of the Heart Transplant Program, and Jon Kobashigawa, MD, director of the Heart Transplant Program in the Department of Cardiology, led the clinical and surgical teams that performed 137 adult heart transplants, including three heart-lung transplants, surpassing the 2023 record of 132. 

The lung transplant team, led by surgical director Dominick Megna, MD, and medical director Reinaldo Rampolla, MD, also reached a new milestone in 2024 with 88 lungs transplanted (including three heart-lung transplants), up from 82 in 2023. More than a quarter were completed using minimally invasive procedures—2- to 3-inch incisions that lead to reduced pain, recovery times and complications after surgery. Nine percent of minimally invasive lung transplant surgeries at Cedars-Sinai—more than that of any other program in the world—were robotic-assisted.

The liver transplant team, led by Kim, surgical director of the Liver Transplant Program, and Alexander Kuo, MD, professor of Medicine and medical director of the Liver Transplant Program, performed 136 liver transplants in 2024, exceeding the 2021 record of 113 transplants.

The Kidney Transplant Program team, led by Stanley Jordan, MD, medical director of the Comprehensive Transplant Center’s Human Leukocyte Antigen and Transplant Immunology Laboratory, and Tsuyoshi Todo, MD, surgical director, completed 324 transplants in 2024, including five pancreas-kidney transplants. In 2023, the program set a record with 336 kidney transplants performed.

Kim emphasized that the expertise and dedication of Cedars-Sinai’s multidisciplinary transplant teams—physicians, nurses, social workers, pharmacists, physician assistants, dietitians, technicians, perfusionists, researchers, administrative professionals and others—are what enable transplants for so many patients.

“They are the ultimate caregivers,” Kim said. “And it is the organ donors and their families who represent ultimate altruism. They are the foundation that gives others an opportunity at life.”

Read more on the Cedars-Sinai Blog: The Wait for a New Heart

That’s what she’s been doing since she was 22, when she was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy, a rare disease that causes the heart muscle to weaken and, eventually, stop pumping blood.

After college graduation, Epps-Manuel began her career in special education. She grew up with a brother with special needs, and Epps-Manuel believed she had found her calling. But one day in 2010, during her first job as a teaching assistant, she came home feeling like she had just run a marathon. She couldn’t catch her breath. An emergency physician discovered her heart was enlarged, and the next day, a cardiologist diagnosed Epps-Manuel with dilated cardiomyopathy.

Just three years earlier, the former intramural college volleyball player had given birth to a healthy boy, and she had never had health issues. No one in her family was known to have a heart condition.

Epps-Manuel’s type of dilated cardiomyopathy is idiopathic, meaning the cause is unknown.

“It was very hard mentally,” she said. “I started having issues with palpitations and had to start wearing an external defibrillator. It was just one thing after another.”

To give herself more flexibility, Epps-Manuel left her elementary school job, moved in with her parents and started a ministry and service center for people with cognitive disabilities.

A few years after she was diagnosed, surgeons at Baylor University Medical Center in Texas implanted a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) to help Epps-Manuel’s heart pump blood. Less than two years later, she received a second LVAD after the first one caused a major blood clot in the cannula of the device’s pump.

In December 2014, Epps-Manuel received a long-awaited heart transplant in Texas, which was followed by difficulties. Medications she took to keep her body from rejecting her new heart so severely injured a kidney that she had to undergo a kidney transplant in 2022. Ten years after the heart transplant, her heart also started to fail. That’s when her Texas doctors referred her to the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai. Tyler Gunn, MD, assistant professor of Cardiac Surgery, led the team of physicians, nurses and operating room staff who performed the transplant.

“When I first met Destany in April 2024 she was very sick, but she was physically fit and had a lot of life ahead of her,” Gunn said.

Epps-Manuel’s case pushed the limits of what surgeons can do.

“With each additional redo surgery, different parts of the heart, tissues and bone fuse together and it becomes much more technically challenging to operate,” Gunn said. “These surgical considerations are why centers from across the nation refer their most difficult cases to Cedars-Sinai.”

Although Epps-Manuel has spent much of her adult life facing life-or-death situations, waiting for her second heart transplant made her feel especially hopeless. She credits the support program led by Rebecca Hedrick, MD, director of Consultation Liaison Services in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, with helping her through her sickest period. The program taught her coping tactics such meditation and helped her use virtual reality to calm her mind. 

“You have to feel your feelings, but you can't stay there,” she said. “You have to have a mindset to fight.”

Epps-Manuel’s second heart transplant took place in October 2024 during a nine-hour operation at the Smidt Heart Institute. A life-support machine called cardiopulmonary bypass temporarily did the work of Epps-Manuel’s heart and lungs. It took surgeons two hours to carefully dissect the bands of scar tissue around the old heart and remove it, a process that typically takes 30 minutes.

Another challenge the Smidt Heart Institute faced was that Epps-Manuel had developed antibodies to the first transplant, so there was a high risk that any future donor heart would be quickly rejected.

Jon Kobashigawa, MD, director of the Heart Transplant Program at Cedars-Sinai and a world expert in preventing and treating organ rejection, managed Epps-Manuel’s care pre- and post- transplant. He created an aggressive immunotherapy plan to stop her body from rejecting the new heart.

Epps-Manuel and her mother lived in Los Angeles for months while she waited for her transplant and recovered afterward. She missed being able to tour colleges with her son, but she is now healthy enough to travel back and forth between her home in Cedar Hill, Texas, and Cedars-Sinai, where she continues to receive desensitization therapy for donor antibodies. She’s excited to volunteer with her ministry again and watch her son compete in senior-year football and track.

“Destany has an incredible, upbeat attitude, which contributes to her recovery,” Kobashigawa said. “She is a joy to care for and continues to inspire our collective team.”

Read more on the Cedars-Sinai Blog--Heart Disease: When to Get a Second Opinion

“The key to good outcomes with enoxaparin is careful selection of candidates,” said Lee D. Lam, PharmD, who monitors heart pump patients in the Mechanical Circulatory Support Program at the Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Transplant Center. “For instance, patients must have a certain level of kidney functioning and lack a history of bleeding, blood clots or allergic reactions to drugs. Due to potential bleeding risks, enoxaparin should not be used within 30 days after the initial surgery to implant the heart pump.”

Lam is the first author of the new study. Oksana Volod, MD, professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Cedars-Sinai, is the corresponding author.

For the study, investigators analyzed medical records from 85 heart failure patients who had been implanted with left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) to boost the heart’s performance. They found that enoxaparin, which a patient can inject at home, is a treatment strategy that can be achieved at a small fraction of the cost of treatment in a hospital setting while improving quality of life. Use of this drug also was correlated with longer patient survival over a three-year period without major bleeding or blood clot events when compared with in-hospital bridging.

Other Cedars-Sinai authors include Lawrence S. Czer, Carmelita Runyan, Ieeshiah Otarola, Jason Jang, Jason Lau, Mignon Gau, Katrina Hernandez, Tram Ngo, Mario Aguillon, Newman Huie, Julie W. Chen, Robert Cole and Jaime Moriguchi.

Follow Cedars-Sinai Academic Medicine on LinkedIn for more on the latest basic science and clinical research from Cedars-Sinai.

As of June, Kobashigawa became president of the society, leading an organization of more than 5,000 clinicians and other healthcare professionals who work in the field of organ transplantation. His responsibilities include working to ensure the organization fulfills its strategic vision of advancing the field of transplantation and improving patient care by promoting research, education, advocacy, organ donation and service to the community.

Kobashigawa will also represent the American Society of Transplantation in discussions with government agencies and policymakers about organ transplant legislation.

“Dr. Kobashigawa’s experience and passion make him the ideal person to serve as a national and international voice in all matters related to organ transplantation,” said Eduardo Marbán, MD, PhD, executive director of the Smidt Heart Institute and the Mark S. Siegel Family Foundation Distinguished Professor. “He has already advanced this field greatly through his clinical work and scientific discoveries and continues to be a strong advocate for standardizing decisions and processes related to transplantation.”

Kobashigawa was instrumental in expanding the Comprehensive Transplant Program at Cedars-Sinai, one of the largest transplant programs in the world.

“Dr. Kobashigawa was instrumental in the development of our world-renowned medical and surgical program, known for changing the lives of patients previously told they were out of options,” said Christine Albert, MD, MPH, chair of the Department of Cardiology and the Lee and Harold Kapelovitz Distinguished Chair in Cardiology.

An expert in diagnosing heart failure, Kobashigawa also is director of the Advanced Heart Disease Division in the Smidt Heart Institute. He evaluates patients for heart transplants and medically manages their health before and after transplantation. Kobashigawa has been part of seminal research studies that have led to the use of novel therapies to prevent and treat organ rejection.  

In addition to his clinical and research expertise, Kobashigawa is known for developing standards for the field of transplantation. He has organized 17 national and international conferences that have led to guidelines on critical issues such as organ allocation, organ failure diagnosis and organ rejection.

Kobashigawa has held several leadership positions in transplantation organizations. He is a past president of the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation and past chair of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Committee on Heart Failure and Transplantation. He also has served as a member of several United Network for Organ Sharing committees. He has published more than 480 peer-reviewed research publications and was recognized with the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation.

“It is an honor to lead the American Society of Transplantation, a prestigious organization with which I have long been involved,” said Kobashigawa, the DSL/Thomas D. Gordon Chair in Heart Transplantation Medicine at Cedars-Sinai. “I look forward to working with esteemed colleagues to advance transplantation policy, research and public education.”

Read more on the Cedars-Sinai Blog: Transplant Saves Bishop at the Heart of His Community

The phone rang 30 minutes later.  

“When I picked up the phone, I thought it would be family or friends calling to wish us a happy new year,” Schulz said. “Instead, it was someone from the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai saying they had a heart match for me and asking how soon I could get there.”

Those early moments of 2024 catapulted a chaotic yet beautiful series of events that led to Schulz’s new heart—which was implanted on Jan. 1.

Schulz first sought help at Cedars-Sinai in October 2019. The congestive heart failure he had been diagnosed with several years earlier had become advanced and his heart was giving out.

“At that point, I was so sick that the first hospital I went to said they couldn’t treat me, and they were telling my wife to contact family to say goodbye,” Schulz said. “Thankfully, my wife wouldn’t accept that as an answer and told them to call other hospitals. Several others also rejected me, but eventually, Cedars-Sinai said yes.”

“When Mr. Schulz arrived at Cedars-Sinai, he was critically ill,” said Dominic Emerson, MD, associate surgical director of Heart Transplant and Mechanical Circulatory Support in the Smidt Heart Institute. “We needed to stabilize him quickly to save his life.”

The first course of treatment for Schulz was extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO—an often lifesaving treatment where blood is pumped outside of a patient’s body to a portable heart-lung machine, giving the patient’s own organs a rest.

After a period on ECMO, Schulz was stable enough for Emerson and team to surgically place a left ventricular assist device, also known as an LVAD. An LVAD is a mechanical device implanted inside the chest that helps the heart pump oxygen-rich blood to the rest of the body. For Schulz, it would serve as a bridge to transplant, said Lawrence Czer, MD, medical director of the Heart Transplant Program in the Smidt Heart Institute.

“LVAD placement is a major open-heart surgery, and some patients experience a prolonged recovery, but Mr. Schulz was a model patient following the procedure,” Czer said. “He followed all our recovery instructions including walking, watching his nutrition, keeping detailed records, and coming to clinic weekly at first. As a result, he recovered quite well with no complications.”

Several months later, in August 2020, Schulz was placed on the heart transplant list—and the wait began.

“This was early in the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was a really difficult time for my family and especially for my three children,” Schulz said.

While he did well with his LVAD, Schulz said he still felt limited. “My youngest son, who was 6 at the time, wanted me to play with him, and I just wasn’t physically able to do as much as we both wanted.”

But the New Year’s Day phone call changed everything. He arrived at Cedars-Sinai with his family a few hours later, ready to receive the medical center’s first transplanted heart of 2024. Emerson was the transplant surgeon on call when Schulz came into the hospital for his procedure.

“Because we can’t predict when a donor match will be available and when transplants will happen, as surgeons, we don’t always get the opportunity to perform transplants on patients we’ve previously worked with,” Emerson said. “But it’s fantastic when we do. It’s very rewarding to be part of the patient’s entire care arc.”

Schulz said even some of the same nurses who helped him through his recovery in 2019 cared for him following his transplant.

“I am so grateful to the team at Cedars-Sinai for the care I received during both of my experiences,” Schulz said. “The compassion they showed not only to myself, but to my wife and my family, was excellent.”

Now a few months post-transplant, Schulz says he is feeling great. When asked if he made any New Year’s resolutions for himself when he received his new heart, he said he is looking forward to more family trips with his wife and their three kids. Schulz is also excited to feel strong enough to play soccer with his youngest son, Sebastian—something he hasn’t been able to do for many years.

April is Donate Life Month, which promotes awareness about organ, eye and tissue donation and honors those who gave the gift of life. As he experiences this new lease on life, Schulz also shares his gratitude to his donor and the donor’s family.

“I understand this is an incredible gift I’ve been given, and it wouldn’t have been possible without my donor and their family,” Schulz said. “It’s not something I will take for granted. I’m grateful every day.”

Read more from Cedars-Sinai Discoveries Magazine: Heartfelt Support

Known for leading-edge therapies and taking on the most complex patients, Cedars-Sinai transplant teams also completed a triple organ transplant in 2023, performing a successful heart, liver and kidney transplant during a 20-hour surgery.

“Genuine compassion, commitment and teamwork enable us to perform these lifesaving operations,” said Irene Kim, MD, the Esther and Mark Schulman Chair in Surgery and Transplantation Medicine and director of the Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Transplant Center. “We are so fortunate to be able to offer our patients lifesaving treatments through donors’ gifts of life.”

There currently are more than 100,000 people in the U.S. on the organ transplant waiting list, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit organization that manages the U.S. organ transplant system. About 20,000 of those are in California.

In 2023, Cedars-Sinai was the ninth-largest transplant center by volume in the U.S., according to current published data from the Organ Procurement & Transplantation Network.

The Comprehensive Transplant Center and Smidt Heart Institute reported excellent patient outcomes, with one-year survival after transplantation at 91% or greater and lung, liver and kidney survival exceeding the national average.

The Kidney Transplant Program team, led by Stanley Jordan, MD, medical director of the Comprehensive Transplant Center’s Human Leukocyte Antigen and Transplant Immunology Laboratory, demonstrated the largest leap. The team performed 336 kidney transplants in 2023, including 15 pediatric transplants. The previous record was 298.

The liver transplant team, led by Nicholas Nissen, MD, surgical director of the Liver Transplant Program and director of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, and Alexander Kuo, MD, professor of Medicine and medical director of the Liver Transplant Program, performed 104 liver transplants in 2023. The 2022 figure was 102.

The Department of Cardiac Surgery in the Smidt Heart Institute is home to one of the largest thoracic organ transplant programs in the U.S. Led by Jon Kobashigawa, MD, director of Advanced Heart Disease and the Heart Transplant Program in the Smidt Heart Institute, and Fardad Esmailian, MD, surgical director of the Heart Transplant Program, the team performed 130 adult heart transplants and two heart-lung transplants in 2023.

The lung transplant team, led by surgical director Dominick Megna, MD, and medical director Reinaldo Rampolla, MD, also reached a new milestone in 2023 with 80 lungs transplanted, placing the program among the top 10 of U.S. lung transplant programs.

The Cedars-Sinai multidisciplinary transplant teams include physicians, nurses, social workers, pharmacists, physician assistants, dietitians, technicians, perfusionists, researchers, administrative professionals and others committed to successful organ transplants.

“So many people work together to create these lifesaving programs, and the contributions of our donors, family and friends who support our transplant team are profound,” Kim said. “They step in to help our patients and their caregivers make it through a transplant, help each other when things get busy and offer our patients and team members emotional and physical support when needed. That is truly inspiring.” 

Read more on the Cedars-Sinai Blog: 7 Myths About Organ Donation

Sams’ note is for the family of the 21-year-old man whose heart, liver and kidney are living on in his body, the result of a 20-hour triple transplant he underwent at Cedars-Sinai in May.

How do you adequately thank a family for a gift borne of such generosity and sadness? Sams is still processing his good fortune to receive three organs at once and wonders how the donor’s family is managing their own feelings.

“It makes me emotional when I think about how these three organs have changed my life,” Sams said. “I prayed every day for a miracle when I was waiting for a transplant. I knew what I was up against, and that the wait would be tough.

“I got my miracle. But I feel sad that this young man’s family had to go through what they went through in order for that to happen.”

Sams became only the 46th person in the U.S. to receive a heart, liver and kidney transplant since the United Network for Organ Sharing, the government agency that tracks organ transplants, started tracking in 1987.

His transplant was Cedars-Sinai’s first successful triple transplantation. The hospital is among the top centers in the U.S. for multi-organ transplants. Cedars-Sinai has completed more than 600 transplants in 2023—the most ever in its history.

For 10 years, Sams had been living with sarcoidosis, a rare inflammatory disease that caused a buildup of scar tissue on his heart and left him unable to work or even walk. Over time, he required multiple visits every week to his doctors to monitor his condition, drain built-up fluids from his body and administer dialysis treatments.

But his health took a turn for the worse early this year when his heart, liver and kidneys began to fail.

“If the heart's not working, it can cause something called congestive hepatopathy in the liver, where the liver just starts not to work very well and can cause chronic and permanent damage of the liver, and then it can also cause stress on the kidneys as well,” said Irene Kim, MD, director of the Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Transplant Center and the Esther and Mark Schulman Chair in Surgery and Transplantation Medicine.

Sams was in the hospital for two months before a matching heart, liver and kidney were available for transplantation.

Sams’ surgeons—Tyler Gunn, MD, director of the Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation Program; Nicholas Nissen, MD, surgical director of the Liver Transplant Program; and kidney surgeon Justin Steggerda, MD—worked together with their teams of up to 15 other providers at a time to transplant the organs. The highly orchestrated procedure required close alignment among the teams and detailed planning.

“The coordination started long before we even got to the operating room,” Steggerda said. “It started with our program coordinators and our respected nursing staff, who made sure that a donated organ was acceptable, identified the best time to do the procurement and organized the logistics of getting all the teams there to get the organs and bring them back safely.”

During multi-organ transplants, surgeons operate based on allowable “ischemic” time—the amount of time each organ can tolerate being outside the body. Based on this, Sams’ heart transplant happened first, followed by the liver and, finally, the kidney.

Nissen said that multi-organ transplants like this exemplify transplant teams’ ability to work together under pressure.

“It’s the ultimate example of medical teamwork,” he said. “Literally every team member has to work with every other team member for this to go right. There are three different teams that are making this happen, so for this to be successful, it takes an absolutely coordinated effort.”

Fast-forward six months, and today, Sams is feeling “wonderful.”

He’s keeping in mind his physicians’ advice: The more he moves, the better and faster his recovery. And so, he walks more than a mile three times a week and makes sure to get in cardio exercise and plenty of stretching. There’s no huffing and puffing as he climbs the stairs at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, where he’s taking classes with the goal of earning a degree in sports psychology.

“I thank the Cedars-Sinai transplant team for having everything down to a science,” Sams said. “I have so much to be thankful for, from all my doctors and nurses to everybody who helped me along the way. And I’m thankful for life—to be as sick as I was and then to come out of it 10 years later with no health problems—it’s the miracle that I prayed for.”

He is also eager to get back into coaching youth baseball and giving back to the community. He’s even hoping to start his own nonprofit to help dialysis patients.

But first, he wants to finish the most important thank-you note he’s ever written, for the most meaningful gift he’s ever received.

“I’m hoping and praying that the donor’s family would like to meet me one day,” Sams said. “It can be hard for people who need an organ to get one, let alone three—and it would mean the world to me to know more about the person who made that possible.”

Read more on the Cedars-Sinai Blog: Being Patient | The Delicate Timing of Organ Transplantation