Hospital Confirms Jobs Had Liver Transplant

By Janet Blake

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Apple(AAPL Quote) co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs has an "excellent prognosis" after receiving a liver transplant at a Tennessee hospital, a doctor confirmed Tuesday.

"He received a liver transplant because he was ... the sickest patient on the waiting list at the time a donor organ became available," said Dr. James D. Eason, chief of transplantation at Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis. "Mr. Jobs is now recovering well and has an excellent prognosis."

Eason said in a news release posted on the hospital's Web site that when Jobs received the transplant, he was in end-stage liver disease.

Eason didn't reveal when the operation took place, citing patient privacy. However, the Wall Street Journal reported it was two months ago.

Apple did not confirm the Journal report, and has said only that Jobs is looking forward to returning to Apple -- which he started in 1976 -- at the end of June.

Eason said the hospital could not reveal further information on the specifics of the transplant.

"That's all that we are giving out at this time," hospital spokeswoman Ruth Ann Hale told the Associated Press.

Wall Street has grappled with the implications of Jobs' illness since August 2004, when investors learned the CEO had kept a cancer diagnosis secret until after he underwent surgery. The company's past silence on matters of Jobs' health made shareholders jittery when he appeared increasingly, even alarmingly, thin last year.

Investors sent the stock tumbling 5% to its lowest point in a year on a rumor last October that Jobs had suffered a heart attack.