This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Digital Industry People
Jobs had liver transplant
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 25 June 2009
Rumours that Apple boss Steve Jobs has had a liver transplant have been confirmed by a spokesman from the hospital that performed the operation. It seems Jobs had the surgery about two months ago.
As previously reported, the iPod/iTunes boss stepped down from the day to day job of running the computer firm earlier this year after finally admitting to long rumoured ill-health. The cancer survivor started to look ill last year, and given that many in the investment community saw Jobs as being crucial to Apple’s continued success, rumours about his health often led to the company’s share price wobbling. When he confirmed he’d be taking some time off, Jobs blamed a hormone deficiency for his obvious weight loss, though it was subsequently confirmed his condition was more complicated than that.
Apple have more recently suggested Jobs is about to return to the company, which might be because the transplant, first reported on in the Wall Street Journal at the weekend, has helped him overcome his illness. The firm seem to be still suggesting their top man will be back on the job imminently.
The Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute confirmed Jobs had had the transplant at their facility in a statement on its website yesterday. It’s possible they issued the statement because of speculation on the net that the Apple boss had somehow jumped the queue for the transplant to let him get back to work asap. The medical centre stressed in its statement that Jobs had the transplant operation simply because he was “the sickest patient on the waiting list at the time a donor organ became available”.
The hospital’s Chief Of Transplantation, one James Eason, added: “Mr Jobs is now recovering well and has an excellent prognosis”.
Quite what condition caused the need for transplant is still not known, though speculators with more medical knowledge have said that the kind of cancer he previously overcame – pancreatic cancer – can spread to the liver. If that had happened, a transplant would be an obvious treatment, and one that could allow Jobs to continue with his life as normal.
It remains to be seen how soon Jobs returns to Apple properly, and whether he will be as active in the running of the company as before. In his absence City types have reportedly warmed to some of his senior colleagues at the IT company, meaning Jobs could probably hand over some of his responsibilities to others on a permanent basis without damaging the firm’s share price.
All of this counts as pop hospital news, of course, because given Apple’s continued dominance of the digital music market, the IT company’s fortunes have implications for the music business.
