A month ago marked the 56th anniversary of the first human heart transplant – and now it seems that we are at the beginning of a new era, in which even parts of the heart are successfully transplanted into human patients. We used Claude and Forefront to tell the amazing story of the first patient of this kind.
In spring 2022, a baby named Evan Monroe underwent a first-of-its-kind partial heart transplant. Owen was born with a severe deformity in his heart, which caused only one of the chambers in it to function, which limited the flow of blood and oxygen in his body and created a strain on the heart and lungs. After doctors concluded that there was no chance of receiving a full heart donation, due to the small number of "donors" at that age, he received valves and arteries from a baby donor who died at the age of two days. The 8-hour surgery was performed when he was just 18 days old at Duke Children's Hospital in North Carolina.
Now, more than a year later, Owen's transplanted heart tissues continue to function and grow inside his body as if they were an integral part of it, according to his doctors. According to a study published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Owen has grown normally, including the implanted components, and has already recorded developmental milestones such as crawling, standing, and verbal voices. Imaging of his heart shows that he is performing superbly, and doctors have noted that he only needs half the usual dose of one of the two substances designed to prevent the body from rejecting transplanted tissue.
The success of Owen's surgery has already led to another dozen partial heart transplants around the world, including through "dominoes" donations, in which a patient receiving a whole heart donates healthy parts of his diseased heart to someone who needs those parts. Such creative solutions increase the availability of organs for life-saving transplants.
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