• Question: What is the maximum number of heart transplants and why is it limited?

    Asked by fisherjwh to Helen, Jenni, Mark, Martin, Stu on 21 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by bealeewh, hilmyrwh.
    • Photo: Jenni Tilley

      Jenni Tilley answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      For one person or in general?

      heart transplants invovle a major operation so I doubt they’d do it more than once on one person because the risks are so much greater when you’re ill and weak.

      In general, we are greatly limited by the number of hearts / new heart valves etc available. This is because we rely on the organs we tranplant coming from other people. A lot of people I work with are trying to solve this problem by building *new* organs *outside* the body, which can the be implanted into the people who need them. The idea is that the body would then gradually replace the new organ, building its own repair! This idea is called tissue engineering. The research is still very preliminary but it has the potential to saves lives if we can get it working

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