Taiwanese transplant surgeons have performed the first heart transplant without stopping its beating and blood supply from the moment it was removed from the donor until it was placed in the recipient's body. This was achieved thanks to an artificial system that saturated the organ with blood and oxygen, preventing damage to the heart muscle while it was not pumping blood.
The transplant patient has already been discharged from the hospital and is doing well. About the transplant told in Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery Techniques.
The heart transplant was performed in August last year on a 49-year-old woman suffering from dilated cardiomyopathy, which is a dysfunction of the heart's ventricles and their enlargement. The donor was a 35-year-old man who was declared brain dead after removing a large tumor in the cerebellum. To ensure a constant flow of blood through the heart, doctors attached a tube to the aorta, through which a pump pumped the donor's blood into the organ, and removed excess blood through tubes in two other veins.
After connecting this blood pumping system, the heart was removed from the donor's body and transported to a nearby operating room, where it was placed into the recipient's body. Only then did the doctors disconnect the system and make sure that the heart was functioning normally.
A post-transplant heart scan showed that the ventricles immediately began pumping blood at 70 percent of normal. After discharge, the patient underwent several more tests, during which no signs of heart muscle damage were found, which occurs when the heart is not saturated with blood and oxygen between the removal of the organ and the transplant.
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