The hearts were transplanted after no beat for 20 minutes
Australian surgeons have recently transplanted dead hearts into patients at Sydney’s St Vincent’s hospital.
The procedure uses hearts that have stopped beating; it has been deemed a ‘paradigm shift’ and will see more people who need a transplant get the treatment they require. It is predicted to save the lives of 30% more patients needing heart transplant surgery.
Up until this point the transplant units have only used still beating donor hearts from brain-dead patients. But the team in Australia have used three hearts that had stopped beating for 20 minutes.
The hearts were coated in preservation solution, developed by the hospital and they were then connected to a sterile circuit so they could be kept beating and warm.
Cardiothoracic surgeon Kumud Dhital, who performed the operation- sad that he ‘kicked the air’ when the first one was deemed a success.
It was possible thanks to new technology, he said. “The incredible development of the preservation solution with this technology of being able to preserve the heart, resuscitate it and to assess the function of the heart has made this possible,” he told a The Guardian on Friday.
The first patient to have the surgery done was Michelle Gribilas who was suffering from congenital heart failure and had the surgery about two months ago.
“I was very sick before I had it,” she said. “Now I’m a different person altogether. I feel like I’m 40 years old. I’m very lucky.”
The second patient, Jan Damen, again suffered from congenital heart failure and had surgery about a fortnight ago. He is still recovering at the hospital.
“I feel amazing,” he said. “I’m just looking forward to getting back out into the real world.”
The former carpenter and father of three said he often thinks about his donor. “I do think about it, because without the donor I might not be here,” he said. “I’m not religious or spiritual but it’s a wild thing to get your head around.”
MacDonald revealed that the team had been working on this project for 20 years and it has taken priority in the the past four.
“We’ve been researching to see how long the heart can sustain this period in which it has stopped beating,” he said. “We then developed a technique for reactivating the heart in a so-called heart in a box machine.
“To do that we removed blood from the donor to prime the machine and then we take the heart out, connect it to the machine, warm it up and then it starts to beat.”
The donor hearts were each kept in the machine for about four hours before transplantation, he said. “Based on the performance of the heart on the machine we can then tell quite reliably whether this heart will work if we then go and transplant it.
“This breakthrough represents a major inroad to reducing the shortage of donor organs.”
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