Dr. Robert Montgomery: The Future of Organ Transplantation

In this episode, Alex chats with Dr. Robert Montgomery, one of the world's foremost organ transplantation and research experts. 

Dr. Montgomery is the Chairman and Professor of Surgery at NYU Langone Health and is the Director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, one of the US' top transplant centers. Dr. Montgomery has been at the forefront of organ transplantation for decades as both a surgeon and a patient. He was the first surgeon to receive an implantable defibrillator after a genetic heart condition caused multiple cardiac arrests. Later, he received a heart transplant as a patient in the first clinical trials with hepatitis C-positive hearts. He was part of the teams that developed the laparoscopic procedure for live kidney donation, conceived the idea of domino-paired donations, created the Hopkins protocol for desensitization, and, more recently, completed the first successful investigational kidney and heart xenotransplantations. 

We discuss:

• The life & death & life & death & life of Robert Montgomery: the story of his heart
• The state of the organ transplantation field: problems with quantity, quality, and consistency 
• How does the US organ transplant waitlist work?
• Different organ sources: live donors, deceased donors, altruistic donors, domino transplants, hepatitis-C positive donors
• The opioid epidemic in the context of organ transplantation: a harrowing source of organs
• Cutting-edge research: how xenotransplantations and bioartificial organs can solve the organ transplantation crisis
• Advanced surgical methods: robotics and AI in organ transplants
• How to style your mustache with the world's foremost expert in organ transplantation