'Beating Heart' Transplants Offer Hope to Patients

Andrea Ybarra is one of a small group of patients who has had a "beating heart" transplant, an experimental operation that could be the future of transplants, according to the Associated Press.

Ybarra, who suffers from lupus, a disorder in which a person's immune system attacks their organs, including the heart, is part of a UCLA-led program to compare the safety and efficacy of the new beating-heart method versus the standard cooler transport.

She received her surgery in August and is reportedly doing well.

While traditional transplants involve an ischemic heart, in which no blood is circulating, transported in an icebox (and with a shelf life of just four to six hours), the beating heart transplant relies on a special box that feeds the heart blood, keeping it warm and throbbing outside the body.

The first beating-heart transplant in the United States was completed on April 8, 2007, on a 47-year-old man with congestive heart failure and pulmonary hypertension at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (UPMC).

"This study presents an exciting opportunity to apply the latest medical technology to help patients receive lifesaving transplants," said the surgeon Kenneth R. McCurry, assistant professor of surgery, division of cardiothoracic surgery at UPMC.

"By maintaining the organ in near perfect physiologic state, the OCS will reduce injury and help extend the life of these organs, which also will improve patient outcomes with less rejection and shorter length of ICU and hospital stay," McCurry said in a statement at the time of that surgery, referring to the Open Care System device that keeps the heart pumping outside the body.

If the new technology shows success, it could change the field of organ transplants, the AP reports. Transplant recipients wouldn't be limited by location, since the cooler method can only keep a heart for a limited amount of time. The technology could also help to ease the organ shortage crisis, as some 3,000 Americans are currently waiting for a heart transplant. Last year, 359 died waiting for a heart — almost one person a day, the AP reports.

Ybarra's transplant heart had been stored in the special box for a little more than three hours.

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