You are all familiar with the novel written by Mary Shelley and turned into dozens of movies about a mad doctor who robbed graveyards and then used the body parts to create a new creature that, with the help of lightning bolts, was brought back to life. The story of Frankenstein is well known, but the concept has been nothing more than fiction, but sometimes, what was fiction over 100 years ago, sometimes tends to become reality in today’s modern world.

Science and medicine knows that the main problem with a Frankenstein story is that most body tissue begins to die and deteriorate after only minutes after death. This has been a problem with organ and tissue transplants for many years – how to preserve the organ or tissue taken from a donor. The time frame between removal from a donor to transplant is critical and sometimes ends up being the very issue that prevents a successful transplant from taking place.

Heart tissue is among the most problematic tissue due to the fact that it often begins to deteriorate before the donor is declared dead. This happens when the oxygen levels in the donor’s body drops to the point that it becomes insufficient for the heart tissue to survive, so it starts to die. The standard method of preserving a donor heart is usually to pack it in ice in an attempt to delay as much decomposition as possible before it is used for a transplant.

This is why what doctors at Duke University accomplished is so revolutionary and exciting. They managed to actually reanimate the heart from a dead donor. Unlike the Frankenstein story, the doctors didn’t use the massive electrical power of lightning bolts, but by using a process known as warm perfusion. In this process, the dead heart was hooked up to a machine the circulated oxygenated blood and electrolytes through the dead heart. Like what happened with Frankenstein, the dead heart began to beat on its own, still outside a human body.

You can see a video of this beating heart at this link. Once open, click on the icon on the right that says, View in the shaded box. https://twitter.com/i/status/1201161903210467328

The reanimated heart was then used in a transplant that was declared to be a success. Jacob Niall Schroder, director of the heart transplantation program at Duke University Medical Center, commented:

1ST ADULT DCD HEART IN THE USA!!!! This is the donor pool actively expanding!

Warm perfusion was developed in the United Kingdom in 2015 and been successfully performed on 75 patients. Dr. Royal Papworth, who has been using this process in the United Kingdom says this new process should expand the donor pool of hearts by as much as 30%.

This important breakthrough will definitely save the lives of more people awaiting heart transplants.

While the entire story of Frankenstein is still nothing more than a novel, the process of reanimating a dead heart and using it for a successful transplant may help bring the reality of the novel a major step closer to reality.