First U.S. 'beating-heart' transplant done at UPMC
Just before performing a history-making transplant surgery, Dr. Kenneth McCurry watched a heart beat two hours after it was removed from the donor.
"It was ... a little surreal," said McCurry, director of cardiopulmonary transplantation at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Heart, Lung and Esophageal Surgery Institute. "To see the heart beating in a machine outside the body -- it was very neat."
The first "beating-heart" transplant in the United States was performed last month at UPMC Presbyterian in Oakland, the health system announced Thursday. Recipient Richard Jackson, discharged April 30, is doing well.
"Hopefully it allows me to recover faster," said Jackson, 47, of Portage in Cambria County. "Hopefully it allows other people in the future to recover faster. As far as expectations, one day at a time."
A heart attack and blood clot in 2005 destroyed the left side of Jackson's heart, making him a candidate for a transplant. On April 8, he received a heart from a 46-year-old man the hospital would not identify.
The circumstances were much like other heart transplants, except this heart was not put on ice. Instead, it was hooked up to the Organ Care System, a machine developed by TransMedics Inc., a medical technology company in Andover, Mass.
In transplants, the donor must be declared brain dead -- a term signifying the end of all brain activity. Machines keep the person's heart and lungs working. Doctors inject potassium chloride to stop the heart and remove it.
For a beating-heart transplant, the organ is put in the machine, which circulates about 3 pints of the donor's blood through the heart, keeps it warm and provides oxygen. This allows the heart to continue beating and receiving nutrients. It is then flown or driven to the hospital. In traditional transplants, the heart is packed in a cooler of ice.
Researchers believe the machine gives the recipient a better chance of surviving a transplant because it supplies oxygen to the heart. On ice, a heart's need for oxygen decreases by about 95 percent, but it can be damaged if oxygen deprivation lasts too long...
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