Heart transplantation is a surgical operation that reserves individuals with severe heart failure and provides for the implantation of a healthy heart from a recently deceased donor.
Heart failure means that serious pathological condition in which an individual's heart is irretrievably damaged and does not "work" more normally; in other words, it is difficult to pump blood into the circulation and to supply the various organs and tissues of the body with oxygen.
The state of heart failure can occur due to: coronary heart disease, cardiomyopathies, defects of the heart valves ( valvulopathies ) and congenital heart defects .
According to the traditional intervention procedure (put into practice for the first time in 1967), just before the sampling, the donor's heart in brain death must be treated with a solution based on potassium chloride and kept on ice. Potassium chloride is used to temporarily interrupt the activity of the "new" heart and simplify its insertion .
The drawback of this arrangement consists in the fact that, sometimes, despite even an adequate electrical stimulation on the part of the operating surgeon, the implanted heart does not "restart" and the transplant fails .
To avoid such a complication, medical engineers have developed a particular machine, called the Organ Care System, which allows transplantation without interrupting cardiac activity. In fact, the Organ Care System supplies the heart with oxygenated blood and keeps it in " beating state ", all at body temperature . In other words, it is as if the heart had never been removed and transplanted from one individual to another.
