Transmedics said surgeons in Australia used its organ care system to preserve and assess a trio of hearts from donors whose organs had stopped beating, before the hearts were successfully transplanted.
Andover, Mass.-based TransMedics said a team at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney used the organ care system for the hearts of 3 donors who were candidates for donation after circulatory death, rather than attempting to preserve the organs on ice.
That process results in at least 60% of candidate donor hearts being rendered unsuitable for transplant, according to the company.
Instead, the TransMedics OCS perfuses the heart with warm, oxygenated blood and continuously monitors the organ.
The company said its platform is the only medical device capable of maintaining donor organs in near physiologic and functioning state outside of the human body, from the time the organ is removed from a donor until its ready to be transplanted.
In November 2012, TransMedics notched the 1st “breathing lung” transplant using the OCS device.
The ability to safely transplant a donor heart would be a paradigm shift that could increase the pool of viable donor hearts to help more patients suffering from end-stage heart failure, TransMedics CEO Dr. Waleed Hassanein said in prepared remarks.
Clinical trials are under way in the U.S. for both the heart and lung transplant indications, TransMedics said, noting that it hopes to win FDA approval in 2015.