Longtime cancer patient gets landmark transplant

The start of a new year often brings hope of better days. For Kris Anderson, 51, of Redmond, Washington, the future has rarely looked so bright. On Dec. 8, she received a lobe of liver from her daughter Lauren at UW Medical Center in Seattle. It was an unprecedented surgery in the Pacific Northwest: the first living-donor liver transplant for the condition of metastatic colorectal cancer.  See related news release.

Kris Anderson has managed Stage IV cancer for nearly a decade, with her doctors employing surgery, chemotherapy and radiation to eradicate the disease. Last summer she learned that her two most recent chemo rounds had failed, and she faced a prognosis of a year or less of survival. But then she qualified for a nascent transplant protocol performed at few U.S. hospitals.

The video segment includes the Andersons (mother and daughter) and Dr. Mark Sturdevant, their UW Medicine transplant surgeon.