Normothermic extracorporeal preservation of hearts for transplantation following donation after brainstem death

The procedure

Normothermic extracorporeal preservation of a heart aims to keep the donor's heart beating outside the body. A special machine is used to deliver warm oxygenated blood to the donor heart. The aim is to reduce the amount of damage to the heart after it has been removed from the donor, and to improve how it works once it has been transplanted. It can be used to preserve hearts donated after circulatory death (death that has been diagnosed and confirmed using heart and breathing criteria), as well as after brainstem death. This procedure has been used to store donor hearts for up to 8 hours before transplantation.