A Landmark Surgery that Saved Three Children with One Heart

Advances in Care

On this episode of Advances in Care, host Erin Welsh talks to Dr. Andrew Goldstone and Dr. David Kalfa, pediatric cardiac surgeons at NewYork-Presbyterian and Columbia, about their groundbreaking heart transplant that saved the lives of three separate children. It was the first time doctors at NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital performed a split-root domino partial heart transplant. In this procedure, one child was transplanted with a new heart and their original heart was used to donate living pulmonary and aortic valves to two separate recipients in need.

Dr. Goldstone, Dr. Kalfa and the rest of the team at NewYork-Presbyterian and Columbia had previous experience with a handful of domino partial heart transplants where one patient is transplanted with a new heart and another receives a valve from the explanted heart. Those experiences helped prepare for the split-root domino, which took nearly 24 hours of extremely coordinated care. In addition to their efforts to increase the number of domino heart transplants being done, physician-researchers at the institution are leading new studies that are also helping improve living valve procurement and storage, allowing more children to receive heart valves that will grow with them and require less surgeries.

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Dr. Andrew Goldstone is the Surgical Director of Heart Transplant and Mechanical Circulatory Support and Director of the Valve Transplant Program at Columbia and NewYork-Presbyterian. He has been recognized nationally and internationally for his clinical and basic science research. In the lab, he focuses on mechanisms underlying collateral artery formation and cardiac regeneration. His long-term goal is to continue adding high-level evidence to better inform the surgical treatment of pediatric and adult cardiovascular disease.

Dr. David Kalfa is a Board-certified cardiothoracic surgeon with a subspecialization in pediatric cardiac surgery. He is also a researcher focusing in the field of growing heart valves and growth accommodating heart valves.

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