At Sydney’s St Vincent Hospital, the doctors fruitfully transplanted a heart that had bunged beating for twenty minutes. The heart was saved with the help of new electronic equipment and injected with a conservation solution that was developed by researchers at the hospital and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research after 12 years of toil. According to Prof Graham, the persons who endure 90 to 95 per cent loss of brain performance normally experience kidney, liver and heart breakdown over a number of hours to days. However, by making use of the safeguarding solution (along with the electronic equipment) the doctors are now able to relocate a heart that has stopped thumping.
The very first such heart relocation was done on a fifty-seven year old lady called Michelle Gribilas (who belongs to Sydney Australia.) At the time of transplantation her heart was not thumping properly; however by the time, the donor heart was positioned into the patient, it had started looking better. A biopsy followed by an echocardiogram was done to look at the function of the heart which was found to be perfect with no proof of tissue damage whatsoever.
Ever since then, another thriving transplant has been carried out on a forty-four old male called Jan Damen. In conformity with Prof Graham, this innovative technique would open up new vistas for Cardiac transplantations in various countries across the globe such as Japan, Vietnam etc, where the meaning of death is that of heart, not of brain!
Leave a Reply