In July 2024, a team of surgeons at NewYork-Presbyterian Children’s Hospital of New York—Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital performed a split-root domino partial heart transplant, saving the life of three children over the course of 24 hours.
The procedures were led by pediatric cardiothoracic surgeons Andrew Goldstone, MD, PhD, and David Kalfa, MD, PhD, according to a June 4 news release from the health system.
Dr. Goldstone is an assistant professor of surgery, and Dr. Kalfa is director of the Pediatric Heart Valve Center and surgical director for the Initiative for Pediatric Cardiac Innovation, at NewYork-Presbyterian and Columbia University Irving Medical Center, both based in New York City.
A donor heart became available for a 10-year-old patient with dilated cardiomyopathy and significant mitral valve regurgitation on the evening of July 24, 2024. The patient, identified as Hend, had been living with a ventricular assist device for seven weeks while waiting for transplant.
Two of Drs. Kalfa and Goldstone’s patients — who had been previously matched to receive Hend’s healthy heart valves — were notified that the three transplant procedures needed to be performed within about 12 hours.
On the morning of July 25, two adjacent operating rooms were readied. One for Dr. Kalfa to perform Hend’s heart transplant and the other for Dr. Goldstone to implant Hend’s pulmonary valve in an 18-month-old patient named John who was born with truncus arteriosus. Dr. Kalfa then implanted Hend’s aortic valve in a 2-year-old patient named Teddy, who was diagnosed with aortic stenosis at 2 months old.
Despite one complication — Dr. Kalfa needed to perform a coronary unroofing on the donated aortic valve — the procedures concluded at about 4 a.m. EDT on July 26, the release said.
John and Teddy were discharged nine days later and Hend left the hospital about three weeks post-transplant. All three patients are doing “remarkably well,” Dr. Kalfa said in the release.
