A heart from a deceased donor started beating again outside the body. In 2019, doctors at Duke University in the United States connected it to a warm perfusion system that supplied it with blood, oxygen and electrolytes, and then successfully transplanted it.
It was the country’s first transplant using a heart from an adult donor who had died following circulatory death. Typically, organs came from brain-dead donors, whose hearts were still beating.
Restoring the heartbeat after circulation had stopped opened another way to obtain hearts, with the potential to benefit thousands of patients on the waiting list.
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