(WBBM Newsradio) -- Northwestern Medicine is celebrating a first-of-its-kind heart surgery in Illinois that could be a game-changer.
Hearts used in transplants traditionally come from people who have been declared brain dead, but with their heart still beating.
“As soon as the heart stops beating, tissue damage starts to occur in the muscle of the heart, and with each subsequent minute the heart becomes less and less viable for transplantation,” explains Dr. Duc Thinh Pham with Northwestern's Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute.
Now, a portable medical device called a TransMedic Organ Care System -- or "Heart in a Box” -- allows doctors to re-animate donated hearts by pumping blood back into them. This can extend the amount of time the heart can survive outside a body.
Using the device for the first time in Illinois, surgeons at the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute successfully transplanted a heart donated after circulatory death.
Dr. Pham says the technology is the biggest advancement transplantation since the 1980s.
“Every patient on the transplant list will benefit. I think patients who are waiting on the lower status may also benefit because right now the higher priority patients are getting the traditional heart donations.”
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