Doctors from Duke University in the United States were able to bring back a "dead" heart and it was then used for transplant.
"Dead" Heart Back to Life
Dr. Jacob Niall Schroder, the director of the Heart Transplantation Programme, shared a now-deleted video of the heart on his Twitter account, showing it beating rather well artificially.
According to Metro, the heart came from a dead donor, but surgeons were able to bring it back to life by using a pioneering technique that pumps blood and runs oxygen to the heart to help restart it.
After bringing back the heart to life, it was then transplanted to a patient in need, although the donor and the recipient of the organ remain anonymous.
The Answer to Donor Shortage?
The procedure, known as "donation-after-death" (DCD) transplant, is when the organ has been removed from a donor that has been pronounced dead and has been done in the United Kingdom since 2009.
Based on a report by The Sun, DCD implants now represent 39% of all the deceased organ donors.
However, this was the first time it was successfully done in the United States, giving recipients more hope of being able to acquire the organs they needed for transplants.
With the technique, the heart can be kept beating for eight hours after it was removed from the donor, giving more time for the surgeons and the recipients to have ample time to prepare or move the organ or patient when needed.
Time constraints have always been a problem when it comes to transplants, so the additional eight hours can do a lot for both the patients and the doctors.
When asked why this was significant, Dr. Schroder explained that this could expand the donor pool of up to 30% and give more hope for those who are waiting for a new heart, and the technique altogether can help reduce the donor shortage that the U.S. is currently facing.
"If Royal Papworth Hospital's [Cambridge, U.K.], experience (approximately 75 DCD heart transplants to date) has shown us anything, this will decrease waitlist time, deaths on the waitlist, with excellent survival results," the doctor said.
Kidneys Thrown
Nonetheless, despite the donor shortage happening in the U.S., a study has shown that around 3,500 kidneys that were donated get thrown away every year in the country.
According to a report by The New York Post, the study was published in the JAMA Internal Medicine in August. It found that 17% of the kidneys that were donated in the U.S. have been discarded during a 10-year period.
Apparently, this was because doctors did not want to risk the health of the patients with a low-quality kidney.
A staggering 93,000 patients are currently in line for a new kidney, with 5,000 of them dying while still waiting for a donor—and this is despite studies that have shown that even older kidneys or the ones with abnormalities are better than getting dialysis.
In fact, doctors in France are willing to use kidneys that were taken from deceased patients that died from illnesses such as diabetes or hypertension.
