On May 11, the first transplant of a heart that had stopped beating for 20 minutes was carried out in Italy. The beneficiary was a 46-year-old man with heart disease and two years on the waiting list for a transplant. This is the first time that an operation of this type has been carried out in the world.
The Italian hospital in the city of Padua carried out the first heart transplant that it had stopped beating for 20 minutes, in the first operation of its kind in the world and that gives hope in the future for this type of intervention. This is the first transplant with such long reactivation times of the heart muscle, explained those responsible during the presentation on Monday, May 15, to the press.
“We have been the first in the world to show that a heart that has ceased all electrical activity for 20 minutes can be used for a heart transplant,” said Gino Gerosa, director of cardiac surgery in Padua.
The exceptionality lies precisely in the times, since the transplantation of a heart from a donor in heart attack It has been a reality for a long time, but it is authorized only between 3 and 5 minutes after a flat electrocardiogram is produced.
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However, in Italy to declare brain death, the law requires waiting 20 minutes, they detailed. “For a long time it was thought that it could not be done, but we believed in it and, once we had authorization from the National Transplant Center, we succeeded on the first try,” explained Gerosa.
Possible resource to increase transplants
The donor was a man suffering from cardiac death, with contextual and irreversible brain damage, rendering any attempt at resuscitation useless. According to the specialist, “this extraordinary result could lead to a 30% increase in the number of transplants in a relatively short period of time.”
The operation was performed on May 11, on a 46-year-old man with heart disease, who had already been operated on as a pediatric patient, and had been on the waiting list for two years. a transplant. The patient is still in intensive care, but the evolution is favorable, “the heart works very, very well,” Gerosa said.
With information from Deutsche Welle
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