Achieve transplanted hearts had stopped beating

Surgeons Saint Vincent's Hospital in Sydney said Friday they have achieved previously transplanted hearts had stopped beating.
Surgeons Saint Vincent's Hospital in Sydney said Friday they have achieved previously transplanted hearts had stopped beating, a breakthrough that could revolutionize the world of organ donation.

Until now, doctors were only used hearts beating, from brain-dead donors, but several surgeons at Saint Vincent's Hospital in Sydney have developed a technique to "resurrect" carrying bodies stand up to 20 minutes.

"We knew for some time that the heart can be revived like other organs and have now been able to revive it with a machine and then perform the transplant," he told AFP Kumud Dhital surgeon, Associate Professor University of New South Wales South Sydney.

The new technique involves transferring the donor heart to a portable machine, in which the body is preserved in a preservation solution, is resurrected and kept warm until transplantation.

The medical director of the heart transplant unit at Saint Vincent's, Peter MacDonald, explained that "the use of donor hearts after circulatory death of the patient will greatly increase the availability of these organs" for transplantation. "This is a breakthrough to reduce the shortage of donated organs," he said.

So far, three people have received this type of transplant, of which two are recovering normally and a third remains in intensive care.

Michelle Gribilas and Jan Damen, the first two patients have undergone the new technique, are satisfied with the result. "I'm not a religious or spiritual person, but it's hard to get an idea of this," said Damen.

Dhital he was optimistic about this technique: "I would say that in the next five years we will see more and more transplants using this new method," he said.