First 'Dead Heart' Used In A Transplant
A hospital in Australia surgeons successfully transplanted a heart which had already stopped beating into a patient.
The list of recipients waiting for an organ donor has always been long, but a hospital in Australia may have discovered a way to fix that.
Surgeons at St. Vincent's Hospital in Sydney successfully transplanted two dead hearts, or ones that had previously stopped beating.
Normally, hearts are taken from donors who have been confirmed as brain dead but whose hearts are functional.
But surgeons at St. Vincent's were able to keep a donor's circulatory dead heart beating by placing it in a machine that keeps it warm and flowing with nutrients.
The device is known as the ex vivo organ care system, but has been referred to as a "heart in a box" machine.
This method of preserving the heart proved much more effective than the typical method of keeping a donor's heart on ice.
It's believed that 30 percent more lives could be saved because of this breakthrough.
Both of the "dead heart" recipients are doing well. Each had suffered from congenital heart failure before their surgeries.
The list of recipients waiting for an organ donor has always been long, but a hospital in Australia may have discovered a way to fix that.
Surgeons at St. Vincent's Hospital in Sydney successfully transplanted two dead hearts, or ones that had previously stopped beating.
Normally, hearts are taken from donors who have been confirmed as brain dead but whose hearts are functional.
But surgeons at St. Vincent's were able to keep a donor's circulatory dead heart beating by placing it in a machine that keeps it warm and flowing with nutrients.
The device is known as the ex vivo organ care system, but has been referred to as a "heart in a box" machine.
This method of preserving the heart proved much more effective than the typical method of keeping a donor's heart on ice.
It's believed that 30 percent more lives could be saved because of this breakthrough.
Both of the "dead heart" recipients are doing well. Each had suffered from congenital heart failure before their surgeries.