A procedure to reduce the size of the heart may alleviate the need for transplants in some heart transplant candidates, according to Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago.
"If ventricular reduction surgery is a success, perhaps as many as 20% of heart transplant candidates might benefit from the procedure, resulting in more donor hearts being made available to patients who have no other treatment alternative," the medical center said in an announcement of the first time its surgeons performed the operation, also known as the Batista procedure.
On July 8 and 9, Rush surgeons performed the heart reduction surgery on a 31-year-old man and a 38-year-old woman with advanced heart failure. The patients' hearts were enlarged to about twice their normal size, but the patients had no other history of coronary artery disease.
"The procedure is being performed at Rush as part of a clinical trial to determine which patients would benefit from the operation and to evaluate its long-term effectiveness," the medical center said. The Batista procedure has been performed on more than 300 patients in Brazil and about 150 patients enrolled in pilot studies in the United States.
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