A Webster man who received a kidney from his mother as a teenager is approaching his 65th birthday with the transplanted organ still working 48 years later.
Raymond Vetuskey is the University of Rochester Medicine's longest-surviving kidney transplant recipient, according to a UR Medicine account of his care. His mother, Elizabeth Vetuskey, would have turned 100 in June, making the functioning kidney roughly a century old.
A virus severely damaged Vetuskey's kidney when he was a teenager. Dialysis left him losing weight and strength as his kidney function declined, and his mother proved to be a near-perfect match for a transplant.
Surgeons at Strong Memorial Hospital performed the operation March 2, 1978, when Vetuskey was 16. He said he felt well enough to attend a Genesis concert three weeks later and kept the ticket stub.
“I'm a miracle, and I feel great every day,” Vetuskey told UR Medicine. “I know I'm lucky and I thank my mother.” For 30 years, he and his mother marked the transplant with an “anni-birth-ery” dinner. She died in 2008.
Miklos Molnar, director of transplant medical services at UR Medicine's Transplant Institute, described the kidney's continued function as rare. He said Vetuskey's young age and close family match helped support the long-term result. The health system says the average survival after a living-donor kidney transplant is 15 to 20 years.
Strong's team performed 237 transplants last year and 87 kidney transplants so far this year, according to UR Medicine. About 500 people are awaiting transplants at Strong, among more than 100,000 nationwide.
New Yorkers 16 or older can enroll in the state's Donate Life Registry. The Finger Lakes Donor Recovery Network coordinates organ donation across 20 counties and serves two transplant centers and 38 hospitals in the Finger Lakes, Central and Northern New York regions.
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