SYDNEY, Oct. 24 (UPI) -- Usually, heart transplant surgery requires a heart that's still beating -- one taken from a still-breathing but brain dead patient. But for the first time ever, surgeons in Australia performed the surgery using a "dead heart" -- one that had stopped beating.
To perform the operation, doctors relied on a medical device called a "heart-in-a-box." The dead heart, once excised from the deceased, is placed in the box where it is warmed and revived with a sterile circuit replenished with fluids that mitigate damage to the muscle. Once brought back to life, the heart is then installed in the new patient. Surgeons say the heart had stopped beating for nearly 20 minutes before it was resuscitated.