In a world first, Australian surgeons have successfully transplanted "dead" hearts into patients at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital.
The procedure, using hearts that had stopped beating, has been described as a "paradigm shift" that will herald a major increase in the pool of hearts available for transplantation.
It's predicted the breakthrough will save the lives of 30 per cent more heart transplant patients.
Until now, transplant units have relied solely on still-beating donor hearts from brain-dead patients.
But the team at St Vincent's Hospital Heart Lung Transplant Unit announced on Friday they had transplanted three heart failure patients using donor hearts that had stopped beating for 20 minutes.
Two of them have recovered well, while the third, who recently undertook the procedure, is still in intensive care.
Cardiologist Prof Peter MacDonald said the donor hearts were housed in a portable console coined a "heart in a box".
Here they were submerged in a ground breaking preservation solution jointly developed by the hospital and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.
The hearts were then connected to a sterile circuit where they were kept beating and warm.
