More than 4,000 people in the U.S. are waiting for a new heart, that’s according to the organization Donate Life America. Anxiety, fear and frustration are some of the emotions people go through while waiting for a lifesaving organ. Dr. Lisa LeMond, a Mayo Clinic cardiologist, says perfusion technology, sometimes called “heart in a box,” is giving hope to transplant patients. Watch the video from the Mayo Clinic.
LAKE HAVASU CITY, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) – A man from Lake Havasu City was saved by breakthrough technology used for the first time in Arizona, a ‘heart in a box.’ We first told you about the procedure in December. The ‘heart in a box’ is a game changer for transplants since it doesn’t rely on the donor to be ‘brain dead’ to recover the organ. The recipient Jeff Robinson said he feels like a new man after receiving the new heart. “I feel blessed to have the second chance,” said Robinson. “I’m able to walk farther.” Read or watch the story in Arizona’s Family here.
The Smidt Heart Institute, Home of the Nation’s No. 1 Adult Heart Transplant Program, Uses Transmedics Organ Care System (OCS) to Grow Geographic Area of Service, Enabling More Lifesaving Organ Transplants
Dominic Emerson, MD, and Pedro Catarino, MD, both transplant surgeons with the Smidt Heart Institute, know how to be spontaneous. At any given moment, they can get the call that a donor heart or lungs are available, requiring them to quickly board a private aircraft to procure the vital organs.
Until recently, those flights were quick jaunts lasting no more than four hours—the time a donor heart can survive on ice. Now that is all changing, thanks to a medical device called the OCS Heart, or “Heart in a Box,” which enables transplant surgeons to travel to much farther destinations to procure lifesaving organs by acting as a miniature intensive care unit that keeps the heart alive.
“Cedars-Sinai has the biggest adult heart transplant program in the world and takes on some of the most complex surgical cases,” said Emerson, associate surgical director of heart transplant and mechanical circulatory support and surgical co-director of the Cardiac Surgery Intensive Care Unit at Cedars-Sinai. “The Heart in a Box technology is helping break down a major barrier of transplantation, ultimately offering many patients a second chance at life.”
Read more, here.