Boy Kept Alive on Artificial Heart Undergoes Heart Transplant

Doctors in Britain managed to keep a three year old boy alive on an artificial heart for more than eight months before he was finally able to undergo a heart transplant surgery.

Joe Skerratt was fitted with a Berlin heart for 251 days as his heart was unable to properly pump the blood around his body. Skerratt was diagnosed with a condition known as dilated cardiomyopathy and needed help from an artificial heart until a heart transplant surgery took place.

About Transplantation
Since the early times, the novel idea of transplanting tissues and other body parts from one organism to the other has captured the imagination of successive generations.

Dr Alessandro Giardini, who is a consultant pediatric cardiologist at Great Ormond Street where the surgery took place, said that Joe was very lucky to find a suitable heart for the transplant surgery.

“There is a chronic shortage of donor organs for children in the UK and at any one time we have several children in the hospital awaiting a transplant. Lots of children wait years for an organ to become available and can very sadly die while they are doing so”, he said.

Source-Medindia

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