By Ellen Kenny
One young woman got a second chance at life following a heart transplant – and then a chance to be immortalised when she gave her old heart to a museum.
In 2006, Jennifer Sutton was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy, a disease that stiffens some of the heart’s chambers, preventing blood from pumping around the body. Read the full article in Newstalk.
As a heart transplant recipient, you’ll quickly find yourself being asked to take a laundry list of blood tests. While this can be inconvenient and frustrating, it’s also really important. Your doctor can’t tell what’s going on with your new heart by looking at you. Blood tests provide information on how well your heart is functioning and how your medications may be affecting your body. By reviewing the results, your physician may adjust medications, recommend changes to your diet or fluid intake, or recognize the need for additional examination.
Read the full article on CareDx.com.
Ryan Scoble, a long stick middie for the Mercyhurst University lacrosse team, thought he had to cut his career short after undergoing a heart transplant but he was determined to return to the game he loves with a miracle recovery. Watch the full story from NBC’s Harry Smith here.
By Ralph Ellis
A recently developed way to perform heart transplants works as well as the traditional method and, if widely embraced, could greatly increase the number of hearts available for transplant, doctors at Duke University say.
The study team looked at 180 heart transplants conducted at numerous hospitals, half involving hearts from brain-dead donors – the traditional method – and half involving hearts from people who had circulatory deaths. Circulatory death occurs when all circulatory and respiratory functions stop.
Read more in WebMD.
Most transplanted hearts are from donors who are brain dead, but new research shows a different approach can be just as successful and boost the number of available organs
By LAURAN NEERGAARD
WASHINGTON — Most transplanted hearts are from donors who are brain dead, but new research shows a different approach can be just as successful and boost the number of available organs.
It’s called donation after circulatory death, a method long used to recover kidneys and other organs but not more fragile hearts. Duke Health researchers said Wednesday that using those long-shunned hearts could allow possibly thousands more patients a chance at a lifesaving transplant — expanding the number of donor hearts by 30%. Check out the full story in ABC News.
By Michigan Medicine
Newswise — As the number of heart transplants performed across the United States continues to grow, surgeons at the University of Michigan Health Frankel Cardiovascular Center are taking advantage of technology that could increase its transplant yield by as much as 30%.
In March, transplant surgeons in Ann Arbor completed the health system’s first heart transplant using an organ from a donor who had recently died — a process called donation after circulatory death, or DCD. The patient, a man in his 30s, received the heart after years of deteriorating due to congenital heart failure.
Read more from Michigan Medicine.
By Adrianna Rodriguez
Dr. Joseph Rubelowsky felt as if he had just robbed a bank.
Still in his scrubs, he boarded the Falcon 900 jet, sat down and glanced over at the white cooling contraption that held the day’s loot. Strapped to the aircraft floor, it looked like a normal carry-on suitcase. Read the full story in USA Today.
MADISON, Wis. – On Dec. 13, 2022, at seven-and-a-half months pregnant, Susan Siegenthaler went to an emergency department in Madison.
She was an otherwise healthy 38-year-old, but her gut told her something was wrong. She was experiencing shortness of breath, a persistent cough and significantly swollen feet.
Read more in WisBusiness.
By Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
On a chilly holiday Monday in January 2020, a medical milestone passed largely unnoticed. In a New York City operating room, surgeons gently removed the heart from a 43-year-old man who had died and shuttled it steps away to a patient in desperate need of a new one.
More than 3500 people in the United States receive a new heart each year. But this case was different—the first of its kind in the country. Read the full article in Science.