Doctors at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit completed Michigan’s first beating heart transplants within the past few weeks.
The beating-heart technique uses technology that keeps the heart pumping inside of a device while the transplant is happening. Both procedures were led by transplant surgeon Dr. Kyle Miletic.
“Normally we stop the heart during a transplant so that you have a still and bloodless field to sew to and to sew to in the safest way possible,” Miletic said. “With this, the heart was beating the entire time, was receiving blood flow the entire time and was moving. That was the extra challenge, was trying to sew a moving target and then also manage the blood flow to the heart at the same time.”
Doctors at Henry Ford say this procedure could deliver better outcomes and improve access to donor hearts.
Only about 70 beating-heart transplants have been performed in the United States so far.
