Surgeon hopeful over new ‘beating heart’ transplant

The surgeon who led the team that carried out the UK’s first ‘beating heart’ transplant has spoken of his hopes for the new technique.

By using a machine to keep donor hearts beating and warm until implantation, the heart should stay in good condition for longer, allowing more vital time to track down an appropriate recipient.

Professor Bruce Rosengard, the surgeon in question, told BBC One’s Six O’clock News, “Just preserving hearts in a better state is a major breakthrough. It reduces the time the patients will be in intensive care units, it reduces the early graft failure rate.”

“So even just as a better preservation technique this device is important,” he added.

Chris Rudge of UK Transplant told the same programme that the new technology could mean a doubling in the number of available hearts ready for transplant.

He said: “That would have a huge effect. There are hundreds of patients waiting for transplantation.”

According to Talk Transplant, a UK transplant information website, approximately 150 to 200 patients per year receive a heart transplant. It says this is restricted only due to the number of donor organs available.

It says six heart transplants are carried out at six locations in the UK: Harefield in London, Papfield near Cambridge, Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital, the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, the Royal Infirmary in Glasgow and Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester.

Additionally, child heart transplants are carried at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, as well as Harefield and Newcastle.

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