A baby in North Carolina has become the first in the state to benefit from a domino partial heart transplant, in which a donor heart is used for a baby in need while the healthy valves from the recipient’s old heart are donated to another baby. The procedure offers a solution to the shortage of hearts and valves available for transplant. The technique builds on the groundbreaking partial heart transplant performed by Duke surgeons in 2022. The chief of pediatric cardiac surgery at Duke Health hopes to see these types of transplants become more common and widespread, benefiting children across the country and eventually across the world. The baby who received the donated valves from the transplanted heart is reported to be doing well.
