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Fun Science Friday – My Heart Will Go On

Posted on February 14, 2014February 14, 2014 By Kersey Sturdivant
Uncategorized

Valentine’s Day is generally filled with love, flowers, and lots and lots of anatomically incorrect hearts.  See —> <3  This week on FSF we revel in the spirit of VDay and bring you hearts, but the appropriately shaped kind.

For years, in order to transplant a heart or a lung, there is a narrow window between the death of the donor and the surgical input of the recipient. How narrow, about 5 to 10 hours! Yes, basically doctors have 5 -10 hours to surgically remove the heart from a donor, transport it to the recipient, and surgically implant it. Crazy! The Doctors are battling the period of time it takes for a heart or lung to stop beating once senescence of a person’s body is achieved.

Well a team of Doctors and Engineers at TransMedics is trying to change that. They have created a device, known as the Organ Care System, that circulates blood through the lungs and pumps oxygen through the lobes. So the heart/lungs can breathe outside the body. Once perfected this innovative techniques stands to change organ transplant forever. Nobel prize anyone?

The Organ Care System pumps blood and nutrients through a human heart before transplant surgery. Credit: Josh Kurz
The Organ Care System pumps blood and nutrients through a human heart before transplant surgery. Click image to see the heart beating!!
Credit: Josh Kurz

Essentially this team has created a real-life ‘heart in a box’, and we bring you this story just in time for V-Day. Imagine the love and joy from receiving a true ‘heart in a box’.

 

Happy Heart Day People!

 

To learn more about this story and to see some really cool GIFs of these beating hearts, go here: http://vimeo.com/51888389

Big ups to Andrew Thaler for bringing this story to my attention, and Jenna Spackeen for the cheesy title.

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Tags: heart in a box medicine transplant valentine's day

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