Surgeons revive "dead" heart, transplant it into three-month-old baby

In a major achievement in organ transplantation, surgeons at Duke University successfully revived a non-beating donor heart on the operating table and transplanted it into a three-month-old baby.

This technique, called "on-table reanimation," uses a specially designed machine to restore function to the donor heart outside the body.

The transplant was declared successful with the baby showing normal heart function and no signs of organ rejection six months after the procedure.

According to a recently published article in the New England Journal of Medicine, the novel technique could increase the availability of donor hearts by up to 30 per cent.

Lead author Dr Aaron Williams said that while the outcomes are comparable to existing methods, the new approach is more straightforward and cost-effective, making it feasible for broader global adoption.

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“This technique could dramatically expand access to donor hearts, particularly by enabling wider use of hearts donated after circulatory death (DCD),” said Dr Williams in a statement. “It’s a major development in the field and could have global impact.”

Despite the success, the technique has sparked ethical debate. Some medical ethicists and professionals have raised concerns about the morality of reanimating organs after circulatory death

In response, a team at Vanderbilt University has introduced an alternative method for preserving donor hearts that avoids reanimation, offering a different approach to managing DCD donations.