ANDOVER, Mass., April 15, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- TransMedics, the company that developed the Organ Care System (OCS) announces that the groundbreaking series of adult heart transplants from a new potential source of donors completed in the latter half of 2014 has today been published in The Lancet. The OCS platform is the only medical device capable of maintaining donor organs in an optimal state outside of the human body from the time the organ is removed from the donor until it’s ready to be transplanted into a suitable recipient. Using the OCS technology, the heart transplant team at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney were the first in the world to complete and publish the successful transplants from a group of new potential donors known as DCD donors (deceased circulatory death) a major medical breakthrough which was never previously possible in heart transplantation.
The rapidly increasing shortage of donors in cardiac transplantation may be alleviated by the use of DCD hearts. The use of other organs from these donors is current practice but has not been possible with hearts until now because heart tissue rapidly deteriorates when the heart stops beating and blood is no longer being circulated around the heart.
The scientific review and publication of these successful transplants in The Lancet represents a historic milestone in heart transplantation. Use of DCD hearts in the future promises a potentially significant increase in the number of transplantable hearts available to patients suffering from heart failure.
These hearts were retrieved from donors whose hearts had stopped beating in the body of the donor. Currently, these DCD donors are not considered for heart transplantation due to the limitations of the cold storage preservation technique. These hearts were retrieved, resuscitated to a normal beating state and clinically assessed using the TransMedics OCS Heart technology.
“The OCS Heart system was paramount to the success of this clinical milestone in heart transplantation as it enabled us to fully assess the donor heart function and metabolic state before transplantation,” said Dr. Kumud Dhital Cardiothoracic & Transplant Surgeon, A/Prof. of Cardiothoracic Surgery at St. Vincent’s Hospital and the lead surgeon who performed the DCD heart transplants.
“The ability to safely transplant a donor heart from DCD donors could be a paradigm shift to potentially increase the pool of viable donor hearts to help more patients suffering from end-stage heart failure, “said Dr. Waleed Hassanein, President and CEO of TransMedics, Inc. “The publication of this successful case series creates a scientific foundation to a new and large potential source of heart transplants for patients that need a heart transplant to treat their end-stage heart failure,” said Dr. Hassanein.
About TransMedics, Inc.
TransMedics Inc. is the world’s leader in portable ex-vivo machine perfusion and assessment of donor organs for transplantation. Headquartered in Andover, Massachusetts, the company was founded to address the unmet need for more and better organs for transplantation. For more information, please visit www.TransMedics.com.
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SOURCE TransMedics, Inc.
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