在美国，医生首次为死去的捐赠者心脏注入新的活力

It’s alive!

它还活着!

Doctors at Duke University have managed to re-animate the heart of a deceased donor by using an artificial circulatory mechanism that continues pumping blood through the organ while it’s outside the body.

杜克大学的医生们利用一种人造循环机制，成功地重新激活了一位已故捐献者的心脏，当捐献者的心脏在体外时，这种机制可以继续将血液泵入器官。

Once revived, the organ was immediately transplanted into a patient in need of a healthy heart, which was reportedly a success. Experts are calling this a major step toward reducing the current donor organ shortage.

一旦激活，这个器官立即被移植到一个需要健康心脏的病人身上，据报道这是成功的。专家们称这是朝着减少目前供体器官短缺迈出的重要一步。

To bring the heart back to life, physicians used a cutting-edge technique called warm perfusion that circulates blood, oxygen and electrolytes through the disembodied heart, prompting it to beat once again. The method was first used at the Royal Papworth Hospital in the UK in 2015.

为了让心脏恢复活力，医生们使用了一种尖端的技术，叫做热灌注，它能使血液、氧气和电解质循环通过没有实体的心脏，促使心脏再次跳动。这种方法于2015年首次在英国皇家帕普沃斯医院使用。

An attending doctor filmed the remarkable (and graphic) process, and shared the footage on Twitter.

一位主治医生拍摄了这一过程，并在推特上分享了这段视频。

Heart tissue usually begins to deteriorate even before a patient has been declared dead due to low oxygen levels produced by the slowing heart. By the time death is proclaimed, the heart is already too damaged for reuse.

心脏组织通常在病人因心脏减慢而产生的低氧死亡之前就开始恶化。当死亡宣告时，心脏已经损坏得无法再利用了。

That’s why, before now, vital organs — meaning those necessary to life — such as the heart had to be taken from a donor who is still alive, but has been declared medically brain dead.

这就是为什么在此之前，重要的器官，也就是那些生命所必需的器官，比如心脏，必须从捐赠者体内取出，而捐赠者虽然已被宣布脑死亡，但还活着。

For the time between hosts, the heart is typically kept cold to prevent decay, and remains viable for no more than six hours before it must be placed in a new body.

在寄主之间的时间里，心脏通常保持低温以防止腐烂，并且在必须放置在新的身体中之前，其存活时间不超过6小时。

It may be a first in the US, but Royal Papworth has performed heart transplants this way — what they call donation after cardiac death (DCD) — for 75 patients since their first trial four years ago, according to Schroder. In a tweet, he estimated that this new technique could broaden the donor pool by “as much as 30%.”

这在美国可能是第一次，但据施罗德说，自从四年前第一次试验以来，皇家帕普沃斯已经用这种方法为75名患者进行了心脏移植，他们称之为心脏死亡后捐献(DCD)。他在推特上估计，这项新技术可以将捐赠者的范围扩大“多达30%”

He told the Daily Mail, “This is the first time in the US, which is a huge deal because transplant need and volume is so high, but a few centers around the world, including Papworth, have pioneered this effort.”

他在接受《每日邮报》采访时表示:“这在美国是第一次，这是一件大事，因为移植的需求和量都非常大，但是世界上有几个中心，包括帕普沃斯中心，率先开展了这项工作。”