2023-04-26 23:34:04
Last October, Dr. Joseph Woo, professor and chairman of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Stanford University, and his team transplanted a heart from a circulatory dead donor while it was beating [1]. They published the procedure in March in the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery Techniques.
This technique has been repeated five times by surgeons at Stanford University of Medicine. Dr. John MacArthur, assistant professor of cardiothoracic surgery, and Dr. Brandon Guenthart, clinical assistant professor of cardiothoracic surgery, have used it on adults while Dr. Michael Ma, assistant professor of cardiothoracic surgery, recently undertook the first case pediatric.
Two methods of transplantation
The objective of this new method is to improve the condition of the organs to be transplanted and to increase the number of organs available (see “partial resuscitation”, a new protocol for organ removal).
Indeed, most transplanted hearts come from donors in a state of brain death, kept alive until removal and whose heart has stopped only once. In this case it is ” plus facile to stabilize the organ.
However, performing heart transplants from donors who died following cardiac arrest would increase their number by 30 to 50%. However, in these cases, the results ” are ” less good because the heart is stopped twice: at the time of death and before the transplant, at the risk of damaging the organ. Oxygen deprivation would also decrease the chances of survival following transplantation.
« Heart in a box »
To answer this problem, researchers have developed a device, “ heart in a box in which the organ is perfused with warm, oxygenated blood. This technique restores heart function without stopping its beating.
Using the procedure, Stanford surgeons, in a four-hour operation, transferred the organ to a cardiopulmonary bypass machine that was already caring for the patient before transplanting the still-beating organ to the recipient.
A “revolutionary” technique
This technique ” revolutionary as Joseph Woo describes it, would make it possible to pushing the boundaries of modern technology and healthcare ». « We’re looking for ways to never have to stop the heart – that’s the next step adds Brandon Guenthart (cf. Australia: towards organ donation during his lifetime?).
[1] Aravind Krishnan et al, First-in-human beating-heart transplant, JTCVS Techniques (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.xjtc.2023.02.015
Sources: Medical Xpress, Roxanna Van Norman (04/21/2023); Futura Sciences, Claire Manière (04/24/2023)
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#Organ #donation #beating #heart #transplants