I was really pleased to read in the news this week, not just because I am a born and bred Cambridgeshire girl, but because of the notable contribution that the UK provides to medical research and development, that a team at a Cambridge Hospital have been successful in pioneering a new form of heart transplant surgery.
A team at the renowned Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire have been successful in restarting the heart of a deceased patient and transplanting it into a recipient patient as a fully functioning heart.
The shortage of organs available for transplantation in the UK has been a topic that I am sure many of us have read about in the media. Thankfully this new technique in non-beating heart transplants could provide some hope. It is anticipated that by adding this type of donor organ as an option, the number of viable donors in the UK could be increased by 25%. This would provide a huge boost to a continuing problem. Research by the British Heart Foundation indicates that on average ‘three people die every day in the UK whilst waiting for an organ transplant. That’s 1,000 people a year, dying due to a shortage of donor organs’.
Up until earlier this month before the new procedure was first carried out in the UK (the first ever non-beating transplant was originally carried out in Australia last year), hearts used in transplant surgery only came from donors who were declared brain-stem dead, but still had blood pumping around their bodies. The new method involves transplanting a heart from a donor whose heart has already stopped beating.
The technique involves; restarting the heart inside a donor patient minutes after death; monitoring the heart with an ultrasound scanner to assess function; if the heart is approved for transplant the surgeon will then remove the heart and place it inside an organ care system to provide time for surgeons to prepare the recipient patient and carry out the transplant. The organ care system provides blood and nutrients and keeps the heart beating until the operation can go ahead, a vital piece of equipment allowing ground-breaking new transplants to be carried out. There has also recently been in the news the incredible story of Baby Teddy whose family donated his kidneys after he sadly passed away having lived just 100 minutes, to further save an adult man who was 233 miles away in Leeds suffering from renal failure. Positive steps forward in terms of social thinking and medicine, that the limits that were once restricting transplant surgeons are gradually being pushed back.
It is good news for the recipient of this first non-beating heart transplant a Mr Huseyin Ulucan, (60) from London, who has been said to have spent only four days in Papworth Hospital’s critical care unit before returning home to recover.
The medical teams at Papworth Hospital have spent more than 10 years working on the non-beating heart transplant technique so that it could be performed last month. Hopefully their success will, in the future, afford the NHS greater scope to allow surgeons to provide transplants to those in need.
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