Latest Heart transplantation Stories

Teen enjoys normal activities outside of hospital while awaiting donor heartTexas Children's Hospital is the nation's first pediatric hospital to discharge a child while on an intracorporeal ventricular assist device (VAD), a feat previously accomplished only at adult institutions. The patient, 16-year-old Francisco "Frank" De Santiago, who was implanted with a mechanical heart pump called the HeartMate II on May 19, 2009, was discharged on Oct. 29, 2009."This is a promising...

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Nov. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- The Joint Commission has awarded Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento the Ventricular Assist Device/Destination Therapy certification, allowing the Sacramento region's only heart transplant program to implant left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) as permanent therapy and not just as bridges to transplant. Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento is the only hospital in Northern California to have this certification. Two hospitals in the Bay Area had the...

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Oct. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Larry Clymer's heart was just plum wearing out. The 60-year-old Rocklin resident needed a heart transplant, and a temporary machine was implanted in his abdomen to keep his heart beating until the right heart was identified. Then, in February, Clymer received more devastating news. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) canceled Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento's contract for its Heart Transplant Program. That meant Clymer...

LOMA LINDA, Calif., Oct. 14 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Monday, October 26, marks the 25-year anniversary of the first neonatal cross-species heart transplant in history. Dr. Leonard Bailey and a team of doctors at Loma Linda University Medical Center transplanted the heart of a baboon into an infant, born with uniformly lethal heart disease and known to the world as "Baby Fae," on October 26, 1984. Though she only lived 20 days following the operation, her legacy has extended the life of...

Organ transplant recipients benefit significantly when they are monitored and receive prompt diagnosis and treatment for otitis media, a common inner ear infection.In a paper presented at the 2009 American Academy of Otolaryngology "“ Head and Neck Surgery Foundation (AAO-HNSF) Annual Meeting & OTO EXPO in San Diego, researchers reviewed the medical records of 3,278 patients who received solid organ transplantation between February 1995 and December 2007 at a medical center in Seoul,...

NEW YORK and BEIRUT, Sept. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- A medical team at the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) has successfully performed the first artificial heart implant in Lebanon, saving the life of a 37-year-old man suffering from terminal heart failure. Led by two AUB doctors, the six-hour operation, which took place on August 28, 2009, was deemed a success after the patient survived the first critical 72 hours and showed improvements in all his vital signs. The artificial...

TUSTIN, Calif., Aug. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Sunshine Heart (ASX: SHC), a global medical device company focused on innovative technologies for advanced heart failure, announced today that Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky has completed implants of the Company's C- Pulse((TM) )heart assist system in two female patients, ages fifty-five and fifty-eight, respectively, under a clinical trial approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These procedures mark the first U.S. female...

A rare U.S. heart transplant replaced the defective heart on the right side of a man's chest with a re-engineered normal left-side donor heart, doctors said. The patient, Jack Eigel, 53, of Wauwatosa, Wis., was born with the congenital condition called situs inversus, in which the major visceral organs are reversed or mirrored from their normal positions. While the condition is usually benign, Eigel needed a transplant because his heart was failing for reasons unrelated to the condition,...

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Aug. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Terumo Heart, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Terumo Corporation, today announced that it has named Thomas (Tom) B. Gould as Vice President, Clinical Affairs and Mark A. Bullivant, as Director, International Sales. Gould joins Terumo Heart from Ventracor, Inc, where he was Vice President, Sales and Marketing, with responsibilities that included clinical site selection, clinical training and clinical support. Gould assumes clinical leadership of...

A British girl who had undergone heart transplant surgery as an infant has reportedly made a full recovery just over three years since having the donor heart removed.At age two, Hannah Clark had a transplant operation in which doctors grafted a donor heart onto her original one that had been failing due to muscle deterioration.Doctors removed the transplanted heart 3-1/2 years ago after Hannah's immunosuppressant drugs resulted in a cancer known as EBV PTLD.At that point in 2006, Hannah's...