Two university hospitals are pioneering new ways to expand lifesaving heart transplants for adults and babies — advances that could help recover would-be heart donations that too often go unused. The new research aims to overcome barriers to using organs from someone who dies when their heart stops. Called DCD, or donation after circulatory death, it … Read more
It started with the gift of a single heart — and ended with three lives transformed. Last July, doctors at New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital performed an extremely rare series of surgeries that changed the lives of three children forever. A heart from a deceased donor was transplanted into 10-year-old Hend Almesafri, who paid … Read more
The heart wants what the heart wants…regardless of whose chest it beats within. Recent research has found further correlation between organ transplant surgery and personality changes. In a study published in Transplantology, researchers at the University of Colorado (CU) had 47 participants (23 heart recipients and 24 other organ recipients) complete an online survey detailing their … Read more
He putts his family first. A 7-year-old amateur golfer from the United Kingdom is planning to raise $125,000 for charity in honor of his late father. George Hughes was just a year old when his dad, Dave, died following a heart transplant at the age of 32. The ambitious youngster — who first picked up … Read more
The world’s second pig heart transplant recipient has died six weeks after having the organ implanted, the University of Maryland Medical Center announced Tuesday. The patient, 58-year-old Lawrence Faucette — a Navy veteran and retired lab technician at the National Institutes of Health — only began showing signs that his body was rejecting the pig … Read more
WASHINGTON — It’s been a month since a Maryland man became the second person to receive a transplanted heart from a pig –- and hospital video released Friday shows he’s working hard to recover. Lawrence Faucette was dying from heart failure and ineligible for a traditional heart transplant because of other health problems when doctors at the … Read more
A mother has been denied the opportunity to receive a heart transplant because she is not vaccinated for COVID-19, despite having a medical exemption. Vicki Derderian, from Melbourne, relies on a ventricular assist device to keep her heart functioning after it failed in 2020, and is desperate for a transplant. She did not receive the … Read more