Heart Transplantation

We previously wrote about beating donor heart transplantation with this new machine by "Transmedic". Well, it sure looks like the cardiac surgeon and allied industry is innovating to try and improve on heart transplant as a means of helping patients with severely failing heart. This is a good sign. Cardiologist and cardiac technologist have been experimenting with left ventricular assist devices (LVAD), with very limited success, even as a bridge to cardiac transplantation.

LVAD had their own plethora of problems, from infections to malignant systemic embolisation, and also bulky devices and device failure. With this new "transmedic" transporter, more donor heart becomes available, and more recepient can benefit. It will be very interesting to watch further development with this "transmedic" beating donor heart transporter to see how long a donor heart can be "artificially " kept alive? This will allow exchange of donors across borders maybe and also treatment of the donor heart to allow it to function better. Perhaps, mildly dysfunctioning donor heart can be treated to allow them to become a donor.

What with our rapid advances in chemotherapy of heart failure, and also stem cell therapy for growing new heart muscles. There is no doubt that I see this new beating donor heart transporter opens many possibilities, and certainly augurs well for the cardiac transplant program.