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Elizabeth Craze
Elizabeth Craze is one of the youngest known recipients of a heart transplant. She received a new heart in 1984 at the age of 2 years, 10 months. The operation was performed at Stanford Hospital, Stanford, California by the team of Norman Shumway, one of the early pioneers of heart transplant surgery. Although considered almost conventional today, in the early 1980s heart transplants (in children especially) were extremely rare. Surgery At the time of Craze's procedure, an ethics committee was formed at Stanford to review the advantages and disadvantages of possible surgery for her. It was not known at the time if a donated heart would "continue to grow along with her body." Her family pleaded for the surgery as she was gravely ill and weighed only 23 pounds. A decision to proceed was reached by the committee and the donor was a young girl from Utah who had been the victim of a car crash. Craze had three siblings who died of heart failure in infancy, and she was diagnosed a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heart Transplant
A heart transplant, or a cardiac transplant, is a surgical transplant procedure performed on patients with end-stage heart failure when other medical or surgical treatments have failed. , the most common procedure is to take a functioning heart from a recently deceased organ donor (brain death is the most common) and implant it into the patient. The patient's own heart is either removed and replaced with the donor heart ( orthotopic procedure) or, much less commonly, the recipient's diseased heart is left in place to support the donor heart (heterotopic, or "piggyback", transplant procedure). Approximately 5,000 heart transplants are performed each year worldwide, more than half of which are in the US. Post-operative survival periods average 15 years. Heart transplantation is not considered to be a cure for heart disease; rather it is a life-saving treatment intended to improve the quality and duration of life for a recipient. History American medical researcher Simon Fle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
