Changing the world of organ transplants while fearing he could die waiting for one

Robert Montgomery, a transplant surgeon who helped pioneer pig organ transplants, has recounted how a personal heart crisis mirrored the system’s waitlist fears. In 2010, while hiking in Patagonia, he suffered cardiac arrest but was revived by an implantable defibrillator shock. By then, his own heart condition—dilated cardiomyopathy—had progressed. Montgomery knew transplant odds were slim and described Ireland’s waiting list context: about 660 people awaiting organs, roughly 100 for organs other than kidneys, and six waiting specifically for a heart. He traced his path from childhood health setbacks and family diagnosis to his career at Johns Hopkins Medicine.