I first was diagnosed with nonischemic cardiomyopathy, so heart failure and that
was in 2001 so it's been it's been quite a while where I kind of gradually you
get better for a while and you get a little worse but it's a down slope you
know so finally in 2007 I had a cardiac arrest and then that I couldn't work
anymore at all after that and my wife had ovarian cancer so we were you know
dealing with that as well by 2014 I really started to fail
So Mr. Grimwood was referred to me by the heart transplant team to see if he would
be a good candidate for heart transplant he is a patient who's had a ventricular
assist device infection for three years and a number of places do not actually
transplant such patients because these infections are very difficult to treat
in his case that had been long-standing he'd been on IV antibiotics for about
three years that had multiple surgeries to try to resolve the infection which
had failed I mean they sort of contained it and so he had actually been turned
down by five different transplant centers for transplant because of that
ongoing infection so I was really interested in using bacteriophage
therapy as an adjunct to IV antibiotics to see if we could resolve the infection
in general device infections and VAD infections in particular are very
resistant to antibiotics because the organisms form a slime layer on the
device and so antibiotics are not good at getting rid of that slime layer and
getting into it but there is literature published showing the bacteria phages
actually penetrate the slime layer very well in the actually kill off organisms
So I was interested in seeing if we could you know continue the IV
antibiotics that he had been on but also add on IV bacteriophage therapy and so
we received approval on an emergency basis from the FDA to use bacteriophage
therapy in him
the thing about the phage was that there were no side-effects that I could tell
and except that I started feeling better and better yeah so that was a preferred
side effect so that that was probably the biggest thing I because every week I was
getting stronger you know and I hadn't really been because these antibiotics
depending on which one you get they could really knock you down so that was
that was really good that that happened
within a week or two yeah within two weeks of being on the list I got the
transplant I took a they asked you if you would
take a hepatitis C positive heart and I did and that's what I got but they're
gonna cure that too so and that's only a few places do that they're throwing
those organs away so you know that'll be great if they can really perfect that
but sounds like they are they have but there was what they they never really
worried me at all about these different things it was just well we just got to
do this and then we got to do this and so they were very supportive about it
all so yeah it's amazing technology I think I got to read up on
more on it the other thing that we've done at UCSD and we're actually at the
forefront of this in terms of transplantation is the use of hepatitis
C positive organs for transplant especially in our heart transplant
center and the hepatitis C virus is unfortunately very common in the US and
it's due in part related to the ongoing opioid epidemic and so organs tend to be
good quality organs and instead of wasting them you know we can use them to
save lives and I think that certainly happened in Mr. Winwood's case as well
we have been treating hepatitis C successfully in many settings including
in the transplant setting and that is our plan with him as well certainly he
tolerated therapy very well he was very compliant with medications you know
along with the bacteriophage therapy and I think as a center you know specially
in terms of a heart transplant center I think we really came together as a team
and you know we tend to do that and I think it's a team effort it worked
there's a feeling of I don't want to project myself too much in the future
because I don't want to jinx it yeah it's all go it's a great write down
because it hadn't been going so great you know so yeah I just I'm just I'm
just anxious to get going get back and do a kind of a normal seed but I'm going
to work on a website I think - for educational website for patients to go
- and maybe interview some of the different doctors I've met and start
putting together a little database that people can go to and relax you know
because a lot of people are very fearful I just had a you know enough knowledge
to know that there was technology here that could maybe save me