Surgeons at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville have transplanted donor hearts into children as young as 2 days old using a recovery method that does not restart the heart before surgery. The hospital said Oct. 7 that five children, ages 2 days to 14 years, received hearts recovered with the technique in a series reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, and that five more children have been treated since.
The method is called REUP, short for rapid recovery with extended ultraoxygenated preservation. In the published group, the children waited an average of 20 days for a heart; no donor hearts were discarded, and none showed primary graft dysfunction or rejection during the study period, according to Vanderbilt Health's announcement.
