Record year for new-style child heart transplant operations

Two UK hospitals have joined together to offer a new type of heart-transplant service for children, reducing waiting times for the life-saving operations.

The programme involves so-called “non-beating donor hearts” being revived to give to teenage recipients.

In 2015, the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge became the first hospital in Europe to retrieve and transplant adult donor hearts that had been allowed to stop beating on their own after the withdrawal of life support. Through the use of a special device, surgeons can effectively restart the heart and keep it healthy until transplantation.

Early last year, the hospital collaborated with Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) in London to extend the service to children.

Up until recently, non-heart-beating donation was deemed to be unsuitable for transplantation because of the damage sustained from oxygen deprivation when the heart stops beating. However, with the aid of a specially designed machine, known as the organ care system, it can be kept beating outside the body.

There are currently only two paediatric heart-transplant units, at GOSH and Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital, and in the last five years, 39 children died before a donor heart became available.

The new collaboration resulted in six of the new type of heart transplants in the UK in 2020. Only four others have been carried out internationally.

In total, 32 paediatric heart transplants were undertaken last year, the second highest in ten years.

“We didn’t believe during a pandemic we would achieve a record number of transplants. It was a phenomenal team effort”, said Marius Berman, surgical lead for transplantation at Royal Papworth.

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Posted by Karen Motley, Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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