Steve Jobs Liver Transplant Confirmed By The Doctor Who Did It

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on June 24

Finally there has been some official confirmation about the June 20th report in The Wall Street Journal that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has received a liver transplant. Word comes from the hospital where the operation took place, Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute, in Memphis. The official press release from the hospital is here. The disclosure was made with the permission of Jobs himself, though there are still many details unknown, such as the date the operation took place, nor the precise nature of the condition from which he was suffering. More from the Associated Press here.

I’ve confirmed that Dr. James D. Eason, (pictured) program director of Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute and the source of the hospital’s statement, was the lead surgeon on the team who performed the transplant. Jobs is, Eason says, “recovering well and has an excellent prognosis,” but declined to give any further information about his condition. Eason is a former Major in the US Air Force, received his medical degree from the University of Tennessee, and is an associate editor of the American Journal of Transplantation.

The hospital also shot down any speculation that Jobs’ received any special treatment because of his wealth or status. Under a medical scoring system called MELD – short for Model for End-Stage Liver Disease – Jobs was the sickest patient on the waiting list with his blood type when a liver became available. More about the MELD system can be found at Medscape, and at Wikipedia

Apparently, Jobs picked a good place to have the transplant done. Methodist University Hospital performed 120 liver transplants in 2008, making it one of the ten busiest liver transplant centers in the U.S.

And while this disclosure may certainly cool any lingering criticism around how the transplant came to happen, it still satisfy the corporate governance critics who say Apple, and specifically its board of directors, hasn’t been forthcoming enough with information around the medical condition of the CEO. But as I reported on Tuesday, there has been precious little guidance from the US Securities and Exchange Commission on precisely when the illness of a CEO becomes a material matter that must be disclosed to shareholders. That leaves companies to meet, arguably, only the minimum requirements of the law.

Update: Now the United Network for Organ Sharing has put out a statement on transplant. This is the organization that under federal contract operates the national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), and it explains more about the MELD score. “Whenever a person known to the public receives a transplant, it is tempting to compare that person’s waiting time to national averages,” it says. “Any comparison of one person’s experience to that of thousands of others can be misleading.”

It goes on: “Liver waiting time is greatly influenced by a formula that assigns priority for organ offers based on the candidate’s risk of dying within three months without a transplant. For candidates 12 or older, this formula is called a MELD score.”

MELD uses tests of liver and kidney function, and can range from 6 which is least urgent, to 40, the most urgent score. Those candidates with a score of 15 or higher are at considerable risk of dying in the short term without a transplant. OPTN policy assigns a priority to liver candidates in the local region of the donor with a MELD score of 15 or higher before less-urgent candidates may be considered.

Of candidates listed in the United States with an initial MELD score between 19 and 24, half receive a liver transplant within approximately 15 weeks, the organization says. Of those listed with an initial MELD score of 25 or higher, half receive a transplant within 20 days. Candidates with lower MELD priority may often wait months to years for a transplant opportunity, it says.

We do not know what Steve Jobs’ MELD score was. Based on the fact that it was reported first in January by Bloomberg News that Jobs was “considering” a liver transplant, and that the operation itself occurred in April, then we can deduct that his need for a transplant was fairly urgent, and as such that his MELD score was likely higher than 15. If this is the case, then it suggests that the illness was serious enough that Jobs was closer to death than anyone has yet indicated. It’s hard to argue under any circumstances that this was not a material fact to which investors aren’t entitled, medical leave or no.

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