On April 8, following rehabilitation, Francisco Munoz returned home to the Coachella valley. Munoz, a farm worker and father of three, had been brought to Loma Linda University Medical Center several weeks ago clinging to life and in dire need of a liver transplant.
He is the 500th patient to receive a liver transplant at Loma Linda University Medical Center.
While Munoz is now sober, a lifetime of alcohol use, starting when he was a teen, and a diagnosis of Hepatitis C, caused the deterioration of his liver.
“If I had known how much suffering I would have because of alcohol, I never would have started,” he says. Munoz, who had been placed on a liver transplant list, received his transplant on March 1 after being taken to the hospital in very serious condition. Before the transplant, he had been on life support and in a coma for weeks.
“He would not have made it otherwise,” says Michael de Vera, MD, his liver transplant surgeon and director of the Loma Linda University Medical Center Transplantation Institute.
Munoz’s survival and positive health outlook is a testament to the quality of patient care he received and the commitment of the medical staff at the hospital, according to de Vera.
“It truly is due to teamwork—a multi-disciplinary team effort on the part of the different professionals and departments within the hospital,” de Vera says.
The first liver transplant at LLU Medical Center was performed in 1993.