{"id":13494,"date":"2014-11-11T18:55:21","date_gmt":"2014-11-12T00:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/?p=13494"},"modified":"2014-11-14T13:37:48","modified_gmt":"2014-11-14T19:37:48","slug":"surgeons-transplanted-a-heart-revived-in-a-heart-in-a-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/surgeons-transplanted-a-heart-revived-in-a-heart-in-a-box\/","title":{"rendered":"Surgeons transplanted a heart revived in a \u201cheart-in-a-box&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"Body\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6897\" src=\"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/35-de-las-personas-en-la-lista-de-trasplantes-fallecen-en-espera-de-un-\u00f3rgano.jpg\" alt=\"35 de las personas en la lista de trasplantes fallecen en espera de un \u00f3rgano\" width=\"196\" height=\"130\" \/>More than a year and a half after an organ that was kept warm and functioning in a machine was transplanted for the first time \u2013 a <b>kidney<\/b> at King&#8217;s College Hospital in London \u2013, a team of surgeons in Sydney, Australia, has already performed three <b>heart transplants<\/b> with a similar technique.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Body\">Although doctors commonly preserve organs into ice before transplantation to prevent tissue breakdown occurring after being removed from the body, when the organ is a <b>heart <\/b>this process gets complicated. Heart tissue soon deteriorates after it is removed; therefore <b>hearts <\/b>have to be taken from brain-dead patients while the organ is still beating.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Body\">Now, a team at St Vincent&#8217;s Hospital in Sydney used a novel technique known as a <b>&#8220;heart-in-a-box&#8221;<\/b> to revive a heart that had stopped beating for up to 20 minutes. The doctors used blood from the correspondent donor to prime the machine. They remove the <b>heart<\/b> and submerged in a ground-breaking preservation solution jointly developed by the hospital and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute. \u00a0Then they connect it to a sterile circuit where they were kept beating and warm. The hearts were each housed in this machine for about four hours before transplantation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Body\">Two of the patients who received the transplant have recovered well, while the third, who only undertook the procedure recently, remains in intensive care.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Body\">Cardiologist and unit director Peter MacDonald said the team had been working on the project for two decades and intensively for the past four years. \u201cWe\u2019ve been researching to see how long the heart can sustain this period in which it has stopped beating,\u201d he said. \u201cWe then developed a technique for reactivating the heart in a so-called heart-in-a-box machine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"Body\">The team of researchers said the success heralded a \u201cparadigm shift\u201d that could save the lives of 30% more heart transplant patients by increasing the supply of suitable donors.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Body\">\u00a0\u201cBased on the performance of the heart on the machine we can then tell quite reliably whether this heart will work if we then go and transplant it,\u201d said MacDonald. \u201cThis breakthrough represents a major inroad to reducing the shortage of donor organs,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Body\"><b>Through:<\/b> <i>BBC News, The Guardian, The Independent<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than a year and a half after an organ that was kept warm and functioning in a machine was transplanted for the first time \u2013 a kidney at King&#8217;s College Hospital in London \u2013, a team of surgeons in Sydney, Australia, has already performed three heart transplants with a similar technique. Although doctors commonly &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4848,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-13494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actualidad-en-la-salud","tag-renal","cat-3-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13494"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13548,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13494\/revisions\/13548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.salud.carlosslim.org\/english2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}