Surgeons are now able to perform heart transplants using organs that stopped beating, it has been announced.
The first operation of its kind was performed at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, Australia.
Surgeons used a heart that had stopped beating for 20 minutes, following the death of a patient, but was then resuscitated.
Doctors say the new procedure will massively increase the supply of organs for heart transplants.
In the UK more people are waiting for transplants than the annual number of operations.
In the last year there have been 206 operations and there are still 275 people waiting.
The Australian doctors say they used a new preservation technique to reduce the damage to the heart. They have taken 12 years to develop the chemicals.
A spokesman said: "This represents a paradigm shift in organ donation and will result in a major increase in the pool of hearts available for transplantation."
Maureen Talbot, of the British Heart Foundation, welcomed the news.
She said: “This is a significant development that will hopefully increase the number of donor hearts available for transplant in the future.
“It is wonderful to see these people recovering so well from heart transplantation when, without this development, they may still be waiting for a donor heart.
“But we urgently need to increase the number of registered donors as less than a third of people are currently signed up."
Leave a Reply