In what’s being hailed as a major medical
breakthrough, surgeons in Australia have
successfully performed the first-ever “dead
heart” transplants–replacing patients’ failing
hearts with donor hearts that had stopped
beating for an extended period of time before
transplantation.
The donor hearts used in three separate
procedures at St. Vincent’s Hospital in
Sydney weren’t actually dead. But they had
stopped beating for about 20 minutes before
being resuscitated and transplanted into the
patients, The Sydney Morning Herald
reported.
Doctors predict that 30 percent more human
lives will be saved using this new technique,
because it boosts the number of hearts
considered suitable for donation.
One of the surgeons, Dr. Kumud Dhital, said
in a press conference on Friday that he
“kicked the air” in excitement when the first
surgery proved successful.
Heart surgeons traditionally have
transplanted only donor hearts from people
who are clinically brain-deadbut whose
hearts are still beating. Otherwise, it was
hard to tell whether hearts that had stopped
beating for an extended period were healthy
enough for transplantation, the Herald
reported.
But the doctors were able to preserve and
resuscitate the organs used in the three
procedures with the help of a so-called
“heart in a box” machine.
The portable device, developed by Andover,
Massachusetts-based TransMedics, revives a
no-longer-beating heart while warming it and
perfusing it with oxygenated, nutrient-rich
blood. During this process, the organ is
injected with a preservation solution that
helps keep heart cells from dying to ensure
that the organ survives surgery.
“Both the preservation solution and the
console that allows the heart to be kept
warm and beating and have blood going
through it and getting oxygen,” Dr. Bob
Graham,executive director at the Victor
Chang Cardiac Research Institute, which
developed the preservation solution, told ABC
News in Australia. “Both of them are
extremely important and I think if either had
come alone, we would have a slight
improvement but we wouldn’t have been able
to do what we’ve done.”
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