Pediatric heart transplant surgeons at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tenn., have adapted a donor heart recovery method for children, allowing them to transplant donor hearts that otherwise would not have been used.
Surgeons with the Golisano Pediatric Heart Institute at Monroe Carell and Vanderbilt Health’s adult heart transplant team adapted the novel technique, known as rapid recovery with extended ultraoxygenated preservation (REUP), for pediatric hearts. They successfully recovered and transplanted five donor hearts in children ranging from 2 days to 14 years old, according to an Oct. 7 system news release. The recipients waited an average of 20 days for transplantation. No donor hearts were discarded, and all recipients demonstrated strong heart function after surgery.
“REUP has already helped expand the donor pool for adult heart transplantation, allowing us to transplant more patients, recover hearts from greater distances, and achieve excellent outcomes,” Aaron Williams, MD, assistant professor of cardiac surgery at Vanderbilt Health, said in the release. “By adapting the technique for children, we’ve been able to recover donor hearts across all pediatric age groups, including hearts that otherwise would not have been used, creating a new opportunity to shorten wait times and save more young lives.”
The REUP method, originally developed by Vanderbilt Health’s adult heart transplant team, is used on hearts donated after circulatory death. Unlike existing recovery methods, which reanimate the donor heart, REUP preserves the heart by flushing it with a cold, oxygen-rich solution after death, the release said. All of the donor recoveries produced in settings where donor heart reanimation is not permitted due to ethical concerns — meaning these hearts would not have been available for transplant without REUP.
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