Longest Surviving Heart Transplant Patient Dies From Cancer

DAYTON, Ohio (WUSA)--Tony Huesman received a new heart 31-years ago at Stanford University Medical Center. Sunday, Huesman died of melenoma--an aggressive form of skin cancer.

Huesman was 51-years-old.

"He had diabetes and cancer," says his widow, Carol. "His heart never gave up until the end when it had to give up."

At the age of 16, Huesman was diagnosed with viral cardiomyopathy. This followed a bout with a pnemonia virus. Cardiomyopathy causes the heart's muscle to thicken and become stiff. In 1978, when Huesman was 20, he got a new heart. At the time of his surgery, Huesman's heart was four-times its normal size.

Huesman became the longest-living recipient of a single transplanted organ in the year 2000, after another man who had received a heart a year before him, had to undergo a second transplant.

Huesman founded the Huesman Heart Foundation in Dayton, which seeks to reduce heart disease by educating children. The foundation also offers a nursing scholarship in honor of Huesman's sister, Linda Huesman Lamb. Lamb also had cardiomyopathy. She received a heart transplant in 1983. The two were the nation's first brother and sister heart transplant recipients. Lamb died in 1991 at age 29.