ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 31, 1996 TAG: 9612310115
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NORFOLK
SOURCE: Associated Press
WILL WALTON WAS THE FIRST person to leave a Tidewater hospital wearing a portable heart pump.
When Will Walton leaves Sentara Norfolk General Hospital next week, he'll be 10 pounds lighter and a whole lot more mobile.
That's because the 17-year-old no longer will have to rely on a burdensome pump to keep his heart going.
After a six-hour transplant Saturday, Walton has a new heart.
Walton's case became public in September when he became the first person discharged from a local hospital wearing a portable heart pump.
The experimental pump, a slimmed-down version of an established model, made it possible for the Virginia Beach teen to live at home, visit friends and even attend a professional wrestling match. Previous versions of the pump had been too large and unwieldy to take out of the hospital.
Walton needed the pump after his heart unexpectedly weakened and became enlarged in July. The pump was a temporary fix until a donor heart could be found.
Five months later, at 10 p.m. last Friday, the hospital called to say a heart had been found. But hospital officials cautioned that Walton was third on a waiting list behind two Richmond-area heart patients.
``We just packed our bags and got up here,'' said his mother, Claudia Walton. ``We were praying that it would be the one. We really wanted it to happen in 1996.''
By early Saturday, tests had shown that the other two patients were not good matches for the heart, so Will was prepared for surgery.
Claudia Walton said even though her son told her he wasn't scared, she knew better.
``I could tell he was nervous because he got to where he wasn't making eye contact,'' she said. ``He finally admitted it to the heart-transplant coordinator when he got into the operating room.''
The surgery took about 6 1/2 hours, several hours more than a typical heart transplant, said Dr. Szabolcs Szentpetery. More time was needed to remove parts of the pump inside Walton's body and because the blood thinners he took required more time to stop bleeding.
Walton is recovering in the intensive care unit of the hospital and is expected to be released next week, Szentpetery said.
``Now he'll be able to ride his new mountain bike he just got without having to worry about it,'' Claudia Walton said. ``And in six weeks, he'll be able to drive.''
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP< Doctors swapped a real heart for Will Walton'sby CNBportable heart pump on Saturday.