Sydney – Researchers at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, Australia, announced after 12 years of research, that they had developed a way to transplant a heart that has stopped beating.

Prof. Bob Graham of the hospital’s Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, said the new technique meant more donor hearts could be used.

“The new technique, which took us 12 years to develop, consists of a portable unit to keep blood flowing through the heart tissue, and a preservation solution to improve its resistance to oxygen shortage,’’ he said.

Graham said a 57-year old Michelle Gribilas was the first patient to receive a heart by the new method three months ago.

He said the new heart stopped beating for 20 minutes during the procedure before being resuscitated, using another function of the new console.

Graham said a second transplant using the same method had since been performed on a second patient, a 44-year-old man.

He said heart transplants had, to date, only been performed where the organ was still beating.

“This means it has only been practical where the donor and recipient are in the same place, and only legally possible where death can be pronounced as soon as brain activity ceases.

“The innovations will potentially open up heart transplantation in Japan, Vietnam and other places where the definition of death is heart death, not brain death,” he added.

Graham said in those countries they could not do heart transplantation at the moment because by the time the donor was legally dead, the heart was no longer recoverable by established methods.

The world’s first heart transplant was performed in South Africa by cardiac surgeon Christian Barnard on Dec. 3, 1967.