A SYDNEY surgeon has successfully transplanted “dead” hearts into three patients, in a breakthrough that could dramatically boost the survival prospects of people with serious heart disease.Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute have developed a technique which means hearts which had been still for 20 minutes can be resuscitated and transplanted into a patient. So far three people have received hearts in this way, with two recovering well and the third and most recent recipient still requiring intensive care.Dr Dhital said dead hearts had been used in the first wave of human heart transplants in the 1960s, with the donor and recipient in adjacent operating theatres. "I would suggest that in the next five years or so we will be shifting more and more towards machine preservation of hearts," he said.
