Astonishing Outcome: World’s first partial heart grown inside child
Researchers have unveiled a remarkable outcome with the ‘world’s first partial heart’ implanted within a child’s heart, where the implanted tissues grew along with it, achieving an unprecedented result in humans.
Surgeons made history in 2022 by suturing heart valves and vessels taken from a donor child into the heart of the organ recipient Owen Monroe, at just 18 days old.
The researchers state that this child may not undergo repeated heart surgeries following the growth of the implanted tissues alongside the partial heart, according to Science Alert.
This technique, involving salvaging original heart tissues and solely utilizing living donor tissues to replace defective parts, had not been previously tested on humans.
According to the research paper published in JAMA, after over a year, Owen’s heart grew from the size of a strawberry to that of an apricot, with the donor tissues growing alongside.
The researchers reported Owen’s heart function as ‘excellent,’ achieving developmental milestones typical of a one-year-old child, such as playing, crawling, and standing.
Owen’s parents, Nick and Tyler Monroe, consented to the surgery upon learning their child suffered from a severe heart defect known as ‘arterial trunk,’ where the vessel exiting the heart fails to separate during growth, resulting in the fusion of two main blood vessels in a way that deprives the child of oxygen.
Typically, infants with arterial trunk undergo full heart transplant surgeries, or are treated using frozen tissues from cadaver hearts.
While the transplanted hearts in infants will grow with the child, they often become functionally impaired over time, leading to half of the children undergoing heart transplant surgeries dying by their twenties.
To prevent rejection of the transplanted hearts by the immune system, recipients are administered immunosuppressive drugs, which prevent the body from fighting not only heart tissues but also cancer and infections.
