June 24 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs is recovering well from a liver transplant in Memphis and has an “excellent prognosis,” according to the hospital where he had the surgery.

Jobs, who gave the hospital permission to make the disclosure, was the sickest patient on the waiting list at the time a liver was available, Dr. James Eason, chief of transplantation at the Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute, said in a statement yesterday.

Apple’s 54-year-old CEO, a cancer survivor, went on medical leave in January after saying he wanted to take himself out of the limelight and focus on his health. During his absence, the maker of the iPod music player and the iMac computer reported two consecutive quarters of sales that beat analysts’ estimates and began selling a new iPhone last week.

“Steve continues to look forward to returning to Apple at the end of June,” said Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman. He declined to comment beyond the statement from the hospital.

Apple rose $2.21, or 1.7 percent, to $136.22 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The stock has gained 60 percent this year.

Jobs received the transplant because he had the highest so- called MELD score among patients waiting for a liver, Eason said. Scores measuring MELD, or model for end-stage liver disease, range from 6 to 40, where the higher the number means a graver illness, according to the California Pacific Medical Center’s Web site. The national average is 20, according to the site.

Liver Transplants

While Eason’s statement didn’t specify when he had the surgery, Jobs had a transplant about two months ago, according to a person familiar with the matter. Ruth Ann Hale, a director at the Methodist University Hospital, declined to comment beyond the hospital’s statement.

The Methodist University Hospital performed 120 liver transplants last year, making it one of the 10 largest centers for transplants of the organ in the U.S., according to the hospital’s Web site.

Methodist University Hospital’s transplant program began in 1968 as the University of Tennessee Organ Transplant Program, according to the hospital Web site. In 1982, it introduced the nation’s third liver transplant program, according to the site.

Survival Rate

The survival rate beyond one year for livers transplanted into patients at the center is 88 percent, among the highest in the nation, according to the site.

Jobs said in 2004 that he had been diagnosed and treated for a neuroendocrine tumor in his pancreas. This type of tumor often spreads only to the liver, where it grows relatively slowly and sometimes doctors will perform a liver transplant to rid the body of the new cancerous growths.

The results of liver transplantation for neuroendocrine tumors have been “mixed,” according to practice guidelines of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases published in Hepatology in June 2005.

“Most patients have died of recurrent disease within the first few years after the operation,” wrote Karen Murray and Robert Carithers, the University of Washington School of Medicine faculty who authored the guidelines. “However, there have been occasional long-term disease-free survivors.”

Neuroendocrine Tumor

Abhinav Humar, clinical director of the Division of Transplantation at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said he’s seen data collected from transplant centers suggesting that patients do better when the spread to the liver occurs long after the initial neuroendocrine tumor appears, rather than shortly after or at the same time the primary tumor is diagnosed.

That may bode well for a case like Jobs, who got initial treatment for his neuroendocrine tumor five years ago, Humar said. Neither Apple nor Jobs have disclosed details of his liver’s condition.

Cupertino, California-based Apple’s board has drawn criticism from corporate governance experts for its disclosures on Jobs’s health. In January, the day the CEO said he had found the cause of his weight loss in 2008, the directors issued a statement praising his leadership.

While Apple’s directors don’t need to give updates on Jobs’s health while he is on leave, that could change when he comes back, said Charles Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.

“These are bits and pieces,” Elson said in an interview today, referring to the hospital’s statement. “If he comes back to Apple, Apple needs to issue some kind of statement.”

‘Luxury of Privacy’

While the U.S. has strict medical privacy laws, Jobs’s CEO role and investors’ view that he is Apple’s chief product visionary may trump his right to privacy, said Nell Minow, co- founder of The Corporate Library, a research firm in Portland, Maine, that tracks corporate governance issues.

“The CEO of a public company cannot have the luxury of privacy about significant medical matters, especially when he is a central part of the company’s brand and a core asset,” Minow said in a June 21 e-mail.

Even if Jobs stepped down as CEO and became chairman, the company probably should still disclose more information about his health, said Elson.

“Given that he has become a public figure and his health is a significant part of investors’ decision to invest in Apple, it’s appropriate for them to give some kind of general signal,” he said.

‘Internal Issues’

Jobs, who had presided over every major Apple product introduction since July 1997, said on Jan. 5 he would remain CEO at Apple while seeking a “relatively simple and straightforward” treatment for a nutritional ailment. Nine days later, he announced his leave through the end of June and handed over day-to-day management to Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook.

Even though Apple directors could have provided more information on Jobs’s health, their handling of the situation may be acceptable, especially since the company has continued to function well in his absence, according to John Dienhart, who holds the Frank Shrontz Chair for Professional Ethics at Seattle University.

“Apple doesn’t share much information with the public regarding new products or regarding management or internal issues,” said Per Lindberg at MF Global Securities Ltd. in London, one of the two brokers that have a “sell” rating on Apple among 40 analysts tracked by Bloomberg. “Steve Jobs’s health issues are an example of this policy.”

To contact the reporters on this story: John Lauerman in Boston at jlauerman@bloomberg.net; Tim Culpan in Taipei at tculpan1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 24, 2009 16:30 EDT