heart transplant tagged posts

After living more than a year with a wearable total artificial heart device, Stan Larkin, 25, returned to the University of Michigan Frankel Cardiovascular Center for a heart transplant. Credit: University of Michigan Health System

Over a year after leaving hospital without a human heart, Stan Larkin, 25, trades his wearable total artificial heart for a real one. The first patient in Michigan ever discharged with a SynCardia temporary total artificial heart in 2014, Larkin was back at the University of Michigan Frankel Cardiovascular Center in May for a heart transplant. The surgery performed by Jonathan Haft, M.D., was a unique national triumph in efforts to replace the failing heart as heart disease grows and donor hearts remain scarce.

“It was an emotional rollercoaster,” Larkin, 25, sa...

This is a coronary artery structure being 3-D bioprinted. Credit: Carnegie Mellon University College of Engineering

This month >4,000 Americans are on waiting list to receive a heart transplant. Researchers have used a new 3D bioprinting method to bioprint models of hearts, arteries, bones and brains out of biological materials. The work could one day lead to a world in which transplants are no longer necessary to repair damaged organs.

“We’ve been able to take MRI images of coronary arteries and 3D images of embryonic hearts and 3D bioprint them with unprecedented resolution and quality out of very soft materials like collagens, alginates and fibrins,” said Assoc Prof Adam Feinberg

“3-D printing of various materials has been a common trend in tissue engineering in the last decade, but unt...