“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. This comes with the risk of heart damage and rejection once it’s transplanted into a recipient…

The NTUH team skipped this interim, performing the zero-ischemic time transplant that saw the heart continue to beat while between bodies…

The operation was able to be performed thanks to a specially designed organ maintenance system that kept the donor heart pumping with oxygenated blood throughout the process…

As for the patient, the 49-year-old woman with dilated cardiomyopathy was discharged from hospital not long after her surgery last August and is doing well. Subsequent post-operative appointments have shown that the woman maintains a low level of cardiac enzyme – something that spikes in typical transplant conditions, indicating heart muscle injury.”

From New Atlas.