A potential boost for transplanted hearts

Heart transplants often fail because the donor heart is not strong enough to overcome the lung damage common in people with chronic heart failure. Recognizing that in most cases only the left side of the heart fails, chief of cardiothoracic surgery John A. Elefteriades, M.D. ’76, HS ’83, and colleagues have come up with a novel technique for retaining the healthy right half. They aim to give a transplant patient the pumping power of a heart-and-a-half to overcome the lung damage. So far the technique has been attempted only in dogs, but the surgeons hope to apply it to humans soon. A description of the method was published in the June issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery. The technique could reduce the number of deaths following transplant and allow the use of weaker donor hearts to increase the currently limited number of donor hearts available.