Transplanted heart transplanted again
Donor hearts are rare. And if you are a big person, you need a big heart. So if one becomes available, then doctors take it.... even if it has already been transplanted once before!
Monday, May 14, 2007
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10 comments:
Michael Chon
3702
This article must give a lot of people on organ donor waiting lists hope for their situation. I never thought that organs could be recycled multiple times. Though the circumstances of the recycled heart means that one person would have to die, it does make the death have a bright side. I thought that it was interesting that size mattered for organ donors. You never really wonder how large your kidneys are. Hopefully the second recipient of the reused heart makes it and we find that organs can be reused.
THis site shows the statistics of patients who recieve organs and the probability that they will recieve an organ. http://www.nyodn.org/organ/o_statistics.html
A little more than two years ago my grandfather recieved a transplant heart. He had problems with his left AV valve - a pretty severe case of mitral stenosis if memory serves me right. Anyway, he spent a long time on the donor list and he isn't even a big guy. People with the most urgent need are placed highest on the list, leaving people like my grandpa without a heart. While I completely agree with this process, I feel like people with less priority should still have access to hearts like these. I hope transplanting transplants will become more common of a procedure specifically to assist people lower on the list. Plenty of people on the donor list would be happy to receive an already used heart.
Here's a link to MayoClinic's article on heart transplants.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/heart-transplant/HB00045
KARL 4556
Typo - Karl's test code is 4553
Kenny Lim
7240
Wow this is great news for patients who are still waiting on an organ donor. I wonder if the double transplant is only an option for people who are in desperate need of a new organ. Because there is a tremendous amount of risk with this operation and a person who isn't in desperate need probably wouldn't risk taking a heart that has already been transplanted. Regardless, there will have to be more double transplants performed before this is procedure/option is heavily considered for most patients. Despite my comments about caution, I believe this is a great finding and a giant step in the right direction for the medical field.
http://www.studentprintz.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticlePrinterFriendly&uStory_id=c7794f20-dfb1-4494-892d-b529895da103
Alexandra 5802
This article must have given many organ donors a positive outlook on donating their organs. Having a heart transplant is a very serious, procedural surgery, and not always successful. Having a re-transplantation of the heart, is even a more risky situation. I think that it is very important for everyone to have an equal chance for survival, thus the list for heart transplants should not be ranked. I never really knew that there is a big difference between sizes of hearts, which leads me to question how big all of my other organs are. I hope that the recipient who received a re-transplantation of a heart is able to have a healthy life, and is no longer having heart problems. If his surgery is successful, then double transplantations of the heart would be very beneficial for research in the medical industry.
Sami
8219
I thought that this article was very interesting. The idea that a heart that was already transplanted once can be transplanted a second time by a different person. It gives much more relief to people that are in need of organ transplants. My dad had to get a liver transplant, but luckily, he got a donor. Imagine if he wasn't able to find one. Now that people are getting donors from ones that have had a donor organ would give more relief to people like my dad. I also found it interesting how a large heart can be transplanted into a small person, but a small heart cannot be transplanted into a large person. I never knew that size would matter, but not that I think of it, a small heart would have difficult time getting enough oxygen to the body.
I found this interesting article about heart transplants in children:
http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentid=507073&catname=Local+News&classif=News+Live
Dennis
2475
I was reading this article and it just instantly gave me hope for the future. Considering that hearts are probably one of the most important organs of your body and that having a faulty heart can probably lead to a extremely uncomfortable death, this recycling of hearts really looks to be a medical breakthrough. If it is the first time this was ever done, and it IS successful, then we can use this to try to figure out more ways to save peoples' lives with other types of organ recycling transplants and such. This has given me more hope in the transplant field of medicine and my chances of getting any kind of transplant if I ever need one in the future.
Heres an interesting article about how transplants work.
http://health.howstuffworks.com/organ-transplant.htm
J Aaron 8021
Well this is awkward. It's like getting a third generation heart. It seems though that there should be more complications this time around. I understand that the heart hardly spent anytime in the second owner, but it still received the owner's blood, so now it's being exposed to a third blood type. I'm wondering now if the age of the heart matters at all.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070204111548.htm
Justin, 6844
I think that the ability for the heart to go through three different bodies is amazing. Especially because of all the difference between bodies, I find it amazing that a heart can still function properly and well even when it's not in the original body. I understand how difficult it is to find a heart that'll match the recipient because there are a lot of factors to consider, such as size or blood or just tissue. It's still shocking how a heart is capable of adapting to different bodies and able to still function properly. It's as if a heart can be used and reused until it finally gives out due to natural causes.
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4588
Nicholas 9969
I wonder just how many people can use a heart before the tissue simply disintegrates. For some reason I was under the impression that organ transplants had been common over the past century, but they've only actually been a reality since the 1950s. Hopefully, at some point, our lifestyles will be healthy enough and stem cell research advanced enough that it won't be necessary to look for transplants altogether.
Here's an article on how transplants work:
http://health.howstuffworks.com/organ-transplant.htm
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