The transplant surgeon needed a new heart—even if it had Hepatitis C

Robert Montgomery is passed out, asleep on a gurney in a hospital gown. He’s just had a heart biopsy, his seventh since a heart transplant he received here at NYU Langone Health three months earlier. Dr. Montgomery isn’t just any patient. He is the director of NYU Langone’s Transplant Institute. And he didn’t receive just any heart transplant. It was from a heroin user who died of a drug overdose and had hepatitis C, a disease Dr. Montgomery subsequently contracted and has already recovered from.