Revolutionary Breakthrough in Transplantology: First Successful Revival of ‘Dead’ Child’s Heart for Transplantation
In a groundbreaking medical achievement, a team of surgeons from prestigious Duke University in the United States has accomplished a historic procedure that could transform pediatric heart transplants.
For the first time ever, they successfully revived a heart that had been dormant — not beating for over five minutes — and transplanted it into a three-month-old baby.
Three months following the operation, the infant maintained normal heart function with no signs of organ rejection, according to ScienceAlert reports.
This milestone demonstrates that the so-called “table reanimation” method might be highly effective in preserving donor hearts that are usually discarded after circulatory arrest.
The reanimation process involved a specially designed device, which connected the donor heart to a system featuring an oxygenator, a centrifugal pump, and a venous reservoir, allowing the organ’s function to be restored outside the body.
Standard organ support systems, typically used for adult organs, are unsuitable for pediatric hearts due to their small size, prompting engineers to create a device tailored specifically for this application.
Currently, in the United States, nearly 20% of infants in need of heart transplants die while waiting due to organ shortages.
Most donor hearts are obtained from individuals declared brain dead, but only 0.5% are retrieved after circulatory death — a process that is fraught with ethical debates, as restoring cardiac activity in the donor’s body after death challenges traditional definitions of death.
The Duke team asserts that their method not only increases the availability of pediatric donor hearts up to 30% but also reduces ethical concerns by granting more transparency during the process.
An alternative approach, developed by surgeons at Vanderbilt University, involves stopping the heart immediately after death and preserving it with cold preservation solutions, preventing organ perfusion and bypassing the ethical debates associated with re-perfusion.
The first three transplants performed with this technique have been successful, with hearts functioning without complications.
This innovation promises to significantly expand possibilities in pediatric transplantation medicine.
Separately, researchers from Newcastle University in the UK employed an experimental method to prevent the transmission of mitochondrial diseases from parents to children.
By combining DNA from three individuals—mother, father, and donor—the technique potentially prevents serious genetic disorders affecting the brain, heart, and muscles.
Already, eight healthy babies have been born using this technology, with one more in utero.
This breakthrough in gene editing could revolutionize the fight against heritable diseases, offering hope to many families worldwide.