Toddler Survives Nine Months Without heart Before Successful Transplant
November 10, 2025 — by Transplant News
USA: A baby born in Virginia with complex congenital heart disease underwent an unprecedented course of care after conventional operations failed to stabilize him. The infant, identified as Michael Webb, was transferred to the children’s Hospital of Philadelphia when his condition continued to deteriorate. With standard surgical fixes exhausted and death imminent, the medical team concluded that radical intervention was the only option to keep him alive while awaiting a donor organ.
Surgeons removed the child’s entire heart and substituted its function with a tailored combination of mechanical circulatory support devices. The approach was experimental and high risk, offered only after specialists, including Dr. Katsuhiro Mehta, assessed that other paths offered no realistic chance of survival. The Webb family consented to the procedure despite being told outcomes were uncertain, accepting roughly even odds as preferable to no option at all.
Throughout the nine months without a native heart, the mechanical system sustained circulation and allowed the child to be maintained on the transplant waiting list. In December, a compatible donor heart became available and transplant surgery was performed at the hospital. The operation succeeded, the child was extubated and eventually discharged from the medical center with family in attendance, marking the end of an extraordinary bridge-to-transplant period.
Now two years old, Michael returns to the hospital for follow-up visits and is reported to be recovering with increasing energy and mobility. Clinicians describe the case as a demonstration that aggressive mechanical support can function as a temporary substitute for a failing heart long enough for a transplant to be arranged. Medical teams say the outcome may inform future care for infants with similarly severe cardiac malformations.
