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An 18-year-old dale baby made history when he became the first person in the world to receive a partial heart transplant. now at 20 years old, owen monroe is making history again, because the tissue used to fix his heart is growing along with his heart. at the time of his first operation, owen s heart was the size of a strawberry. today, it s about the size of an apricot. this type of growth was a long sought after goal for this type of repair. let s bring in meg terrel. walk us through this groundbreaking procedure. this is a great example of really good news. this baby, of course, was born with a genetic heart defect and he needed immediate care. the previous option would have been to use nonfunctioning ....
the hope is that he won t. the hope really is that the donor parts will keep growing along with him. of course, it s important to be able to keep following this and see it done many more times to see how well it continues to work, but he will need immunosuppressive drugs because he has these donated parts, but the hope is that it won t be the way it was before, where he would have to get multiple surgeries. on a question of this getting replicated, have there been other kids that have gotten the same kind of transplant? there have now. owen was the first, but since, there have been 12 more of these procedures, including nine at duke health, where this was pioneered, and the doctor who pioneered this work. when owen s parents asked the doctor, how many times have you done this before? he said, i have done it five times on piglets. owen and his family are really, true pioneers. good for him. i hope nothing but help for his future. ....