SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — A new technology known by doctors as “heart in a box” is being used at Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego and it is helping save the lives of those who need a heart transplant.
The technology technically named the TransMedics Organ Care System widens the distance a heart can travel. Rather than being in a cooler and placed on ice, the heart is connected to a box that supplies it with blood so it can continue to function during travel.
“There’s hope,” said a heart transplant recipient, Matt Smith.
Smith was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy at age 36 and was told his heart was failing. His mother and grandfather both died of heart attacks at the age of 47.
Smith was immediately placed on a left ventricular assist device, which is a pump implanted in a person’s chest that stimulates the heart.
“It was a tube coming out of my stomach that was connected to batteries and a pump in my heart that pumped my heart for me,” said Smith.
Shortly after, he was added to the heart transplant list, where he waited for several years. While he tried not to lose hope, some days he did.
“Then he switched over to saying ‘I’m going to get my heart soon, I’m going to get my heart soon.’ Of course, I’m hopeful but there were scary times, and he would get frustrated and get down about it,” said Smith’s wife, Monica.
In July of this year, Matt was the recipient of a heart thanks to heart in a box.
“The heart in the box is portable and battery-powered,” explained Dr. Karl Limmer, the cardiac surgeon at Sharp Memorial Hospital who performed Smith’s surgery. “We take it in a plane to a donor hospital. At the donor hospital we put heart on machine and then we transport it however it needs to be transported, via helicopter or airplane or by ground.”
Limmer explains that because the heart is being pumped with blood during transport it allows for longer transportation times, opening up the donor pool.
“The device gives us more leeway allowing us to go further. We can go to Hawaii or Alaska and we don’t have to be concerned that the aircraft will land in three hours in San Diego and give us one hour to put the heart in,” said Limmer.
Sharp Memorial Hospital is one of the few hospitals using this new technology and has performed two transplants so far using heart in a box.
Smith, a father of three with one more child on the way, is three months post-operation and recovering well.
“There’s hope. Don’t give up. Don’t get down and depressed,” Smith said. “Sharp is putting hearts in people and they’re being successful at it.”