Oklahoma City hospital marks 20-year milestone

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Officials at Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City are marking the 20-year-anniversary of the first heart transplant.<br/><br/>The late Nancy Rogers became Oklahoma's

Tuesday, March 8th 2005, 9:50 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Officials at Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City are marking the 20-year-anniversary of the first heart transplant.

The late Nancy Rogers became Oklahoma's first heart transplant patient on March fourth, 1985, when she received the heart of a Georgia teenager who was killed in a car crash. Though Rogers died a few months later, here have been 373 heart transplants since.

Now, 90 percent of heart transplant patients live one to three years and 66 percent live three years or longer.

Doctor Johnny Griggs says the biggest advancement in the past 20 years is a drug to prevent the body from rejecting a new heart or other transplanted organs. And Griggs says a workable artificial heart could be developed within the next 20 years.