In a groundbreaking medical achievement, surgeons at Duke University have successfully resuscitated a "dead" heart on the operating table and transplanted it into a three-month-old baby, saving the child's life. The innovative technique, known as "on-table reanimation," involves using a custom-designed machine to revive the donor heart outside the donor's body.
The transplant was a success, with the infant showing normal cardiac function and no signs of organ rejection six months later. This breakthrough could potentially increase the donor pool by up to 30%, offering new hope for infants in need of heart transplants.
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The new method has similar outcomes to existing methods but is simpler and much less expensive, said first author Aaron Williams, MD, in an article just published in the New England Journal of Medicine. He said the technique has great potential to expand the number of donor hearts available by making organ preservation technology more widely available worldwide and expanding the use of DCD hearts.
"It's something that has never been done in the field of heart transplantation with success," he said in a news release. "I think this is really going to be a game changer. This is going to be a technique that's going to essentially have worldwide applicability."
However, the technique raises ethical concerns, with some critics questioning the morality of reviving a heart after circulatory death. To address these concerns, another team of surgeons at Vanderbilt University has developed a different approach, preserving donor hearts without reanimation.
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