Heart in a Box Technology Expands Heart Transplant Window
Smidt Heart Institute uses Transmedics Organ Care System (OCS) to increase the geographic area of service to enable more organ transplants
The Transmedics Organ Care System (OCS) Heart, or “Heart in a Box,” enables transplant surgeons to travel to much farther destinations to procure transplant hearts by acting as a miniature intensive care unit that keeps the heart alive.
April 5, 2021 — Smidt Heart Institute transplant surgeons Dominic Emerson, M.D., and Pedro Catarino, M.D. know how to be spontaneous. At any given moment, they can get the call that a donor heart or lungs are available, requiring them to quickly board a private aircraft to procure the vital organs. But until recently, those flights were quick jaunts lasting no more than four hours — the time a donor heart can survive on ice. Now that is all changing, thanks to a medical device called the Transmedics Organ Care System (OCS) Heart, or “Heart in a Box,” which enables transplant surgeons to travel to much farther destinations to procure lifesaving organs by acting as a miniature intensive care unit that keeps the heart alive.