Royal Papworth Hosptal in Cambridge pioneers world-first technique in child heart transplantation
A collaboration between Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridges and Great Ormond Street has increased the number of heart transplants for children in the UK by 50 %.
Together they’ve introduced a world-first paediatric heart transplant technique that has successfully expanded the donor pool, with six children receiving life-saving transplants during the pandemic.
The donation after circulatory death (DCD) heart transplant programme was previously only available to adults.
With these transplants, the heart has stopped beating in the donor and is transferred to a pioneering machine where doctors restart it and keep it beating outside of a human body.
It’s a technique Royal Papworth have been using since 2015.
In 2020 the hospital collaborated with Great Ormond Street in London to extend the service to children.
The team at Royal Papworth retrieve the heart and the team at Great Ormond Street implant the organ.
It’s the first-ever use of the technique in paediatric transplantation anywhere in the world.
Across Britain there is a shortage of suitable donors, which means that the number of children who would benefit from organ transplantation exceeds the number of organs available.
Children face longer than average wait times due to the difficulty of finding the right match and because the consent rate for paediatric organ donation is much lower than the national average for adults.
For children who can receive adult-sized hearts, the DCD heart programme is a promising solution to reducing the waiting time.
Jacob Simmonds, who's a Consultant Cardiologist and Transplant Physician at Great Ormond Street says the technique has essentially doubled the number of transplants they can do in eligible patients at the hospital:
He also added:
“Ultimately, though, this still relies on families having conversations around their organ donation wishes, and then of course the bravery to consider making this precious, life-saving gift at a time of unimaginable tragedy.”
The teams at both hospitals are working together to develop a new machine that will enable DCD heart donation from even smaller infants, which would pave the way for transplantation for babies and young children, where donors are the most scarce.