Heart Transplant Saves Retired Firefighter

After a lifetime of service, Ken Cochran turned to the USC Transplant Institute for help when he needed it most.

Former firefighter Ken Cochran is all heart. From an early age, he wanted to help others. In high school, he volunteered as a Big Brother and with Red Cross blood drives. At 17, he went on a ride-along with a neighbor who was a firefighter.

“I was hooked from the first moment — both by the action and the chance to be useful,” Ken says.

After training as an EMT, he joined the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) at age 24, starting at Station 25 in Boyle Heights. He spent the bulk of his career — 14 rewarding years — at Station 33 in South Central L.A.

Over those years, Ken fought many fires, breathed in smoke and other toxic substances, and witnessed fatalities and other sad events. “You have to be able to go from a deep sleep to respond to an alarm within seconds,” he says, “and on the way to the call, your heart’s going bam, bam, bam!”

One day, Ken was part of a crew battling a commercial-building fire when he felt massive chest pain. At age 40, he was having a heart attack.

During surgery, doctors placed stents in two of his coronary arteries. Ken’s heart muscle was so damaged that it forced his retirement from the front lines. He set out to find a new purpose.

Once recovered, he trained in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and volunteered with the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City’s Center for Health and Wellness Program. He also provided first aid and wound care for homeless people.

Determined to get his health back, he ate healthy meals, exercising daily. Even so, his heart weakened so much over the next decade that, in July 2016, his cardiologist referred him to the USC Transplant Institute, part of Keck Medicine of USC, with the hope of finding him a heart transplant.

“I was highly impressed by the patient care of the Keck Medicine team,” Ken says. “I hit the jackpot.”

The path to a heart transplant

Ken couldn’t know then that his journey to a new heart would take several more years — or that Keck Medicine would be by his side the entire way.

“Ken’s an amazing story of what happens when an incredibly motivated patient meets an incredibly motivated medical team,” says Ajay Vaidya, MD, a Keck Medicine cardiologist and medical director of heart failure, transplant and mechanical circulatory support with the USC Advanced Heart Failure Center.

Because Ken’s heartbeat was dangerously fast and irregular, the team embedded a combination pacemaker/defibrillator in his chest.

The cardioverter defibrillator would shock the heart back into rhythm and the pacemaker would maintain it.

Ken also moved up the list of transplant candidates, until he was next on the list. He began a series of tests to evaluate his ability to handle the surgery. He passed them all, with just one exam remaining with a urologist.

The news came as a jolt: Ken had prostate cancer.

It meant that, before being able to have his heart transplant, he would have to test cancer-free for a year. In August 2020, Andre Abreu, MD, a urologic oncologist with USC Urology, part of Keck Medicine, successfully removed Ken’s prostate. Following surgery, Ken waited.

After a year, he made the deadline, but by then had end-stage heart failure.

“It was going to take him time to grow strong enough for a transplant,” says Raymond Lee, MD, a Keck Medicine cardiac surgeon and director of mechanical circulatory support and heart transplant. “We wanted to give him that chance.”

The pacemaker was no longer sufficient. In April 2022, Dr. Lee implanted a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) in Ken’s chest, which would help Ken’s heart pump better. Some heart failure patients, who may not want or qualify for a heart transplant, receive an LVAD as a final treatment option, helping to sustain them and improve their quality of life.

For others, like Ken, the LVAD is a bridge to transplant.

“We’re able to take on the highest-acuity cases like this because of all of our teams that work together — transplant, ventricular assist device, intensive care, post-op and nursing,” Dr. Lee says. “Each one is phenomenal.”

Inpatient monitoring before heart transplant

Most patients go home after LVAD surgery, but Ken’s arrhythmia was life-threatening.

The team formed an innovative plan: Ken would remain hospitalized at Keck Hospital of USC until he was transplant ready and a heart arrived.

He settled in, determined to make the best of it. “Ken’s optimistic attitude and

inspirational ability to fight helped him at every step,” Dr. Vaidya says.

In September 2022, several nurses crowded into Ken’s hospital room, jumping and shouting, “Your heart is here!”

“They were so excited for me,” Ken says. “They had been such a huge part of keeping me alive.”

On Sept. 12, Dr. Lee and Jonathan Praeger, MD, a Keck Medicine cardiac surgeon, transplanted Ken’s new heart — a complex surgery that took over eight hours. “There’s no ‘routine’ transplant,” Dr. Praeger says. “Each patient brings their own issues coming into surgery. Ken had been very sick for a long time.”

I’m going to take very good care of this heart. I’m going to do a lot of wonderful things with it.

Ken Cochran, patient, USC Transplant Institute

The next morning, concerned that Ken’s donor heart wasn’t functioning at its optimum, his medical team placed him on ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), which provides temporary support for the heart and lungs.

Within a few days, his heart beating solid, Ken came off ECMO and began rehabilitation. In all, he would stay at Keck Hospital for seven months.

“He went through a really tough situation,” Dr. Praeger says, “and now he’s thriving.”

Two-and-a-half years later, Ken walks daily and works out. In addition to his other volunteering, he restores vintage fire engines at the L.A. County Fire Museum near his Bellflower home. He loves spending time with his two children and four grandchildren.

He’s even back playing bass in his heavy metal rock band, Contusion Blue. For too long, due to his health, he had to give up music. Now, he says, “I can play for hours.”

Ken is safeguarding the gift he’s been given.

“I’m going to take very good care of this heart,” he says. “I’m going to do a lot of wonderful things with it.”

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