Media invitation
Mere days after receiving a new heart the 15 year-old is ready to leave the Montreal Children’s Hospital
Montreal – June 27, 2012: He’s bounced back with vigour! A mere few days after having a heart transplant operation, 15-year old Vincent Lambert returns home to his family, friends and dog Max. The teen has recovered quickly from the operation during which a team of cardiac surgeons, nurses and other medical professionals removed his defective heart and replaced it with a donor heart.
Please join us to hear from Vincent, his parents and members of his medical team, before he is officially discharged from the hospital as an inpatient.
WHEN: June 28, 2012 at 14 h 30
WHERE: Montreal Children’s Hospital, 2300 Tupper Street, corner Atwater, Amphitheatre
Background
When Vincent was three-months old he was infected by a virus that damaged his heart. He was monitored by the hospital and led a fairly normal life until the spring of 2011, when he went into heart failure. Medications helped for a while, but by autumn 2011 it was clear his heart was giving out. Vincent was admitted to the Montreal Children’s Hospital in September and was placed on a mechanical heart, termed a Berlin heart, on September 18, 2011. This was a temporary situation, until he received a new heart. During this time, he remained in hospital because he required around the clock monitoring by a team of specialists in the hospital’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. It was a long waiting game.
During Organ Donation week in April 2012, Vincent and his family along with his health care team and Transplant Quebec held a press conference to encourage Quebecers to sign their organ donation cards to potentially help Vincent of the hundreds of Canadians waiting for a life altering or life saving organ.
Vincent underwent his heart transplant operation in early June.
