An Ozark man just celebrated his 41st birthday, and it was a significant milestone for him. Just a few months ago, Tyler Gimlin didn’t know if he would live to see another year.
Last August, Gimlin was just the second person in the country to have a liver transplant performed completely robotically. It was at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, which is a pioneer in that field.
Gimlin, who developed cirrhosis of the liver related to alcohol use, remembers first having symptoms as early as 2018, but he chalked them up to getting older.
“I didn’t know exactly the extent of it until, you know, my Aunt Lana Thomas — actually, I started turning yellow, and she said, 'you're going to a doctor.' And I tried to not go as hard as I could," he said, and she — there was no other option. So I just went to the doctor and, you know, I knew I was not doing good, but I didn't know it was that bad."
That was in January, 2024. Gimlin was told that, without a liver transplant, he would continue to get sicker.
He traveled to Barnes Jewish in St. Louis where he was told that he would need a transplant as soon as possible. He immediately quit drinking and was placed on the wait list for a liver on May 1 last year.
“I remember the transplant coordinator called me and told me I was listed. And I said, 'so this is going to be a couple of months down the road before I even start worrying about a phone call in the middle of the night.' And she said, 'I've had them call an hour after we have this conversation,' " Gimlin said. And I mean, panic just set right in then. You know, you've got to be ready to go.”
The first liver that was offered to Gimlin was positive for Hepatitis C. When he arrived at Barnes, he was feeling OK, so he opted to turn it down, "and as soon as I did, on the ride home, I thought I'd just made the biggest mistake of my life.”
A week later, he got another call that a liver was available, he headed up to St. Louis only to find out that the liver wasn’t functioning the way it should. He returned home to Ozark, and a month later, he got another call.
"Everything just felt different about that time, like it was going to happen," Gimlin said. "I can't explain it, but I was wiped out as far as what I could do. I couldn't do anything anymore. And in the middle of the night, I got on my hands and knees and prayed to God. I said, 'if you want me to get through this, you're going to have to help me. But if it's my time to go, then let me go.' But I thought, 'if I get through this, I will do whatever you say, no questions asked.' ”
This time Gimlin was right — everything was different, and after a nine-hour surgery, which Dr. Adeel Khan, a Washington University transplant surgeon at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, performed completely robotically, Gimlin had a new lease on life.
“I basically needed zero physical therapy," he said. "I had no stiches, no staples. I've got maybe a six inch scar on my stomach. I mean, it's so small. I mean, I really hit the jackpot with going to Barnes, getting the robotic transplant. I mean, I hit the transplant lottery I guess you could say. Because, I mean, I've seen stories and incisions for this procedure, and mine is so minimal. It blows by mind what Dr. Khan and his team did.”
Dr. Khan said, the reason Gimlin was able to recover so quickly is because the technique being used at Barnes is far less invasive. For one thing, the surgery is done using very tiny incisions except for a larger incision for removing the old liver and replacing it with a new one.
“Normally for a liver transplant, the operation, the incision or the cut is, it looks like a Mercedes Benz, you know, the logo," he said. There's a big cut on either side of the ribs, right under them and then a little cut in the middle. So, as you can imagine, with that a lot of muscles are, pretty much all of the muscles that hold the abdomen together are cut and then sutured back, so it does take a lot of recovery.”
With robotic liver transplants, Khan said, there’s less damage to the tissues, and a camera offers a very detailed view.
But, while robotic surgery is being widely used for a variety of surgeries, performing a liver transplant completely robotically is groundbreaking.
“More and more surgeries are now performed through smaller incisions, like the keyhole surgery that we traditionally called it, so liver transplant is probably the most complex operation that can be performed through the keyhole, and it wasn't done before, and we had been working towards it," Khan said. And we do a lot of robotic surgeries, so all of that experience kind of comes into play for this.”
In 2024, the transplant center at Barnes Jewish had 619 total transplants, 164 of which were liver transplants. Khan said he and six other surgeons at Barnes Jewish perform over 300 robotic transplant surgeries each year. So far, the center has performed six liver transplants 100% robotically, and Khan said the patients are all doing well. They’re now training other surgeons to do the complex procedure, a skill that takes time to master.
Meanwhile, Gimlin is enjoying a life without the symptoms of cirrhosis.
He feels better than he has in years. He walks several miles a day and plans to play softball this spring. And, for that, he said he will always be grateful.
"This time last year, I was, I couldn't even walk, I couldn't even get upstairs," he said. "And now I can walk three miles a day. You know, I never thought I would be able to do that again. And, you know, that's, God did that for me. And I will not ever take that gift for granted the rest of my life. I will forever — the donor, the donor's family, Barnes, the gifts they've given me, I will never take that for granted, and I will never do anything to let them down.”
*Spelling of Dr. Adeel Khan's name was corrected.
