Should hospitals rely solely on donor hearts from brain dead patients whose hearts were still beating? Tamil Nadu state organ transplant registry convener Dr J Amalorpavanathan has been assailed by this question from different stakeholders -patients, transplant surgeons and medical students.Since 2014, when doctors in Australia successfully transplanted hearts donated after circulatory death -when they stop beating -surgeons across the world have attempted similar transplants.

Heart and lungs harvested within half-an-hour of death are kept beating either in a heart-lung machine before being transplant ed to a person with end-stage organ failure. To transport the organ to another hospital, doctors abroad use ‘heart in a box’.As of now, at least one-third of the organs are lost because a brain dead patient dies before harvests can happen. After death, heart is starved of oxygenated blood and muscle cells die. Although a few hospitals, mostly private ones, have gone ahead with kidney transplants, many haven’t managed to make it big with heart or lung transplant, said urologist Dr Sunil Shroff, head of MOHAN Foundation, an NGO that campaigns for organ donations…..Readmore