What do you envision when you think of transporting a donated heart? If you picture medical teams quickly jumping into action, by plane, helicopter, or ambulance to retrieve a heart and storing it around bags of ice in a cooler until it can be implanted, you aren’t far off from the truth.

 

With all of the technological advances in medicine over the past 15 years, organ retrieval has stayed very much the same. Until now.

 

The Sentara heart transplant team is now using the Sherpa Pak™ transport system by Paragonix® Technologies to ensure a consistent temperature at all times of transport. The SherpaPak is a temperature controlled cooling system that allows the heart to be stored at a chosen temperature.

 

A heart needs to be stored between four and eight degrees Celsius during the four-hour window of transport. Without a temperature-controlled device, about 22 percent of all hearts suffer during transportation (from either too cold or too warm temperatures), according to Sentara Cardiothoracic Surgeon Dr. Jonathan Philpott.

 

The wheeled device is about the size of an airline bag. It includes a leak-proof nesting system ensuring the donor heart will not suffer damage during transport. The system is FDA-cleared for temperature maintenance up to four hours, but the manufacturer has validated 12+ hours while protecting the heart from a too-cold or too-warm environment.

 

“This new system gives exact control over a critical aspect of the transplant process,” says David Baran, MD, Sentara medical director for advanced heart failure and transplant. “It even has a phone app that lets the surgeon monitor the heart temperature in real time during transport. In 2018, there’s an app for that, even organ transplantation!”

The Sentara heart transplant team performed a transport with the new device in October 2018. Gwenisha Collins said she feels great and recovering well with her new heart.

 

"I’m doing great; it really has been amazing. They tell me that the transport device they used had a lot to do with the way I am recovering," Collins said.

Dr. Philpott said it’s typical to shock or massage the heart during transplant surgery to bring it back to beating, or provide it with a stimulant to help the process. But for Collins’ surgery, none of that was needed.

"It just woke up and it immediately started pumping," explained Dr. Philpott. "Normally we sit and watch it for an hour to let it rest and wake up, but we didn’t have to do any of that."

 

The Sentara Heart Hospital program transplants about 20 hearts each year. Learn more about heart transplants at www.sentara.com/heart.