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World's first "nonstop beating heart" transplant is a medical breakthrough
For the first time, surgeons have successfully performed a remarkable new heart transplant in which the donor organ never skips a beat in the process, reducing the damage that can occur during such a complex operation. It ushers in a new era of more successful heart transplant surgery.
A team of surgeons at the National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) in Taipei undertook the revolutionary operation, during which the donor heart continues beating between the organ removal and transplantation stages. Traditionally, the donor heart would be removed and preserved in cold storage to reduce its workload – during this stage, it's considered "ischemic time," or the period during which the organ is cut off from blood supply. Interestingly, in 2023 and 2024, Stanford University issued papers detailing its own beating-heart transplant operations – but in procedures to date, the hearts had undergone brief periods of ischemic time (10 to 30 minutes) between removal and connecting to the support system.
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