Owen Monroe was 18 days old when he underwent a partial heart transplant. His heart has grown from the size of a strawberry to that of an apricot in a year.
The technique of salvaging native heart tissue and only using living donor tissue to replace defective parts has never been tested in humans before. Baby Owen's heart function is "excellent," and he is reaching the developmental milestones of a normal one-year-old, the researchers reported in JAMA. The lead surgeon, Joseph Turek of Duke University, had only performed the procedure on five piglets.