New transplant technology revives hearts after death

 

In the U.S., over 122,000 people sit on waiting lists for organ transplants, and 18 of them will die every day. However, a new medical device could vastly improve their odds by infusing certain organs with oxygen and nutrients, meaning they can last longer before reaching people on the list—but also meaning organs can be taken from entirely new kinds of donors.

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In terms of transplants, there are two ways to die—your brain stops working, or your heart does. These distinctions are important, because organs can only come from braindead patients; by the time the heart stops on its own, it’s already starved of oxygen and its muscle cells are dying (and the rest of the organs are, too). In braindead patients, the organs can be cooled down before they are stopped, drastically cutting down cell death before they reach a person in need.

But a company called Transmedics from Massachusetts has developed something called the Organ Care System—and it doesn’t only keep hearts, lungs, kidneys, and livers alive longer, but it can reanimate hearts. So far, it’s been used successfully in at least 15 cases between the United Kingdom and Australia; clinical trials are still being run in the U.S.

How it works: The heart (or other organ) is put in a sterile chamber with the temperature and humidity carefully controlled. The organ donor’s blood is supplied into the heart, which the machine infuses with oxygen and nutrients to keep the heart alive and beating until it can reach the new patient.

But according to MIT, the Papworth Hospital in the United Kingdom (where the device has been used eight times), has managed to figure out a slightly different way to apply the device. In seven of the cases, the patients were severely brain-damaged and on life support. After being taken off, their circulation stopped naturally, leading to circulatory death. The team then waited five minutes before clamping off blood supply to the brains and restarting the hearts—while they were still inside the donors.

Share the love: More hearts will be available

In this way, the condition of the heart was surveyed, and the other organs were kept alive as well. Then, the hearts were removed and placed in the device for transport to patients. These results of these trials are, as of yet, unpublished.

However, this now allows those who didn’t die from brain problems to become donors as well, and it keeps their organs alive much longer. In the case of hearts, this means the supply could be increased by 15 to 30 percent. This is important everywhere, but especially so in the U.K.; there are only 180 hearts available a year, as according to Stephen Large of the Papworth Hospital. In the U.K., very few people experience brain death instead of heart death thanks to their prohibitions against firearms. (There are twice as many heart donors per capita in the U.S.)

Of course, this could raise some ethical questions about what counts as truly dead and how long to wait before taking organs—but as Robert Truog, a medical ethicist at Harvard University, said, “They are dying and it’s permissible to use their organs. The question is whether they are being harmed, and I would say they are not.”

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Feature image: Thinkstock

Gif credit: A donated heart beats while being supplied with blood and oxygen. MIT