Heart Transplant Procedure Is Only 2nd of Kind in U.S.
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PITTSBURGH — Surgeons Monday removed the heart of a patient undergoing a heart-lung transplant and placed it in a patient whose heart was failing, hospital officials said.
The procedure was the second of its kind in the United States, Presbyterian-University Hospital spokesman Thomas Chakurda said. The first was performed May 11 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, when the heart of a cystic fibrosis patient receiving a heart-lung transplant was transferred to a man who had been waiting for a donor heart.
Both patients in the Pittsburgh transplants were in critical condition.
The heart was donated by a 25-year-old woman suffering from primary pulmonary hypertension and transplanted into a 53-year-old man, Chakurda said.
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