Walter Payton liver clinic launches in Naperville

West suburban liver disease patients don't have to travel to Chicago for top-notch care anymore with the opening of the Walter Payton Liver Center Outreach Clinic at the Edward Hospital Cancer Center.

The opening of the clinic, announced Tuesday, means the cancer center in Naperville now offers services from a treatment facility named for Payton, the Chicago Bears star who led the team to its 1985 Super Bowl victory and died in 1999 of a rare liver disease and bile duct cancer.

"We just thought it was a great partnership to work together because we're all working toward the same cause and helping patients - be it with cancer or liver disease," Walter's wife, Connie Payton, said Tuesday in Naperville.

The new partnership connects suburban patients with Dr. Sean Koppe, a liver care expert who's director of hepatology at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System.

Koppe said the Edward Cancer Center already has all the screening equipment and medical supplies necessary to test and treat patients for conditions such as hepatitis C, cirrhosis, fatty liver disease or liver cancer.

Dr. Alexander Hantel, medical director of the Edward Cancer Center, said some of those conditions are becoming more common, especially among the Baby Boomers generation. And until the cancer center connected with the Walter Payton Liver Center, it didn't offer an expert doctor in the field.

"It's a great opportunity. It comes form a place that has big expertise," Hantel said about the Walter Payton Liver Center and Koppe from the University of Illinois hospital. "We didn't truly have a liver specialist."

Koppe has been seeing roughly 10 patients in Naperville for the past three months, mainly conducting tests and lab procedures at an office that's close to their homes.

"It's obviously a lot more convenient for them," Koppe said.

Koppe visits Naperville patients at 801 S. Washington St. once a month, but he could expand his schedule to twice a month as more suburban patients seek treatment through the outreach clinic.

The only liver procedures that won't be available in Naperville are transplants, which the Walter Payton Liver Center conducts in Chicago at 1740 W. Taylor St.

The Payton center opened in 2007. Connie said her family chose to put Walter's name to the project because it offers some of the best liver doctors in the world to treat conditions similar to the one that contributed to his death.

"Tying Walter's name into it brought the attention they needed," Payton said.