Steve Jobs’s Surgeon Talks Tumors, Transplants And Gaming the System

In his first interview since performing Steve Jobs’s liver transplant earlier this year, surgeon James Eason spreads some interesting light on the case.

Namely, he denies Jobs gamed the transplant system; Tennessee has lots of livers for transplantation; the surgeon is the leading experts in recurrences of Jobs’s rare cancer; he treats far more poor blacks than billionaires; Jobs has a pretty good survival prognosis; and the CEO is a “genuinely nice person.”

* Trained at Harvard, Eason is THE leading expert in treating recurrences in the rare type of cancer Jobs had. This is why Jobs went to Tennessee to get a transplant. Jobs always seeks out the best in the field.

* Jobs did not cheat the system to get a transplant. “It’s not gaming the system,” Eason says. “It’s people choosing where they want their health care.”

* Jobs’s prognosis looks good. Eason only performs a liver transplant if he’s certain he can eliminate all the spreading cancer. About 70 percent of patients have healthy organs five years after surgery.

* Memphis has more livers than patients. Or did, until Eason ramped it up. His Memphis hospital performed 35 transplants in 2005 (before he arrived). In 2008, he jacked it to 120 transplants, and 90 so far this year.

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* Jobs is “really a genuinely nice person”  and “a special person,” says the surgeon. Perhaps he also performed a personality transplant? Or more likely, Jobs made sure not to piss off the man who held his life in his hands.

Link to the Bloomberg interview.

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