Teenage Girl Has First Pediatric Cardiac Autotransplant
A Philadelphia-area teenager has become what is believed to be the first pediatric recipient of a cardiac autotransplant.
During the five-and-a-half-hour surgery on November 29 at Abington Memorial Hospital, cardiac surgeon V. Paul Addonizio, MD, stopped the 17-year-old girl's heart, removed it from the chest cavity, and placed it in a solution of iced saline. He then removed a malignant tumor from the heart and patched the damaged atrium using tissue from a cow's heart.
"The greatest challenge to this surgery was that we had no road map to follow," said Dr. Addonizio. In March 1997, he removed a tumor from the patient's heart, but its large size prevented removal of all microscopic cells, the hospital said in a statement. The recurrence of the tumor was detected on November 15, and the autotransplant was performed two weeks later.
"I wanted to save what was basically a healthy heart with a malignant tumor. In my opinion, the best option for her future was removing the tumor while preserving her own heart," Dr. Addonizio said.
Until now, the procedure had been performed in only a handful of adults in the United States.
On November 15, 2000, Transplant News Network reported that a cardiac autotransplant had been performed on a 57-year-old woman at Methodist DeBakey Heart Center in Houston ("Rare Autotransplant of Heart is Performed in Texas"). Reuters new service reported that the woman told reporters a week later that she felt fine.
For Your Information:
See Abington Memorial Hospital's statement at
www.amh.org/hlthsvs/first.htm.
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