Monroe Carell surgeons adapt donor-heart recovery method for children
Vanderbilt Health says the REUP technique has been used in 10 pediatric transplants.
NASHVILLE - Pediatric heart surgeons at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt have adapted a donor-heart recovery technique developed by Vanderbilt Health's adult transplant team for use in children, according to Vanderbilt Health. The method, called REUP, preserves hearts donated after circulatory death by flushing them with a cold, oxygen-rich solution instead of reanimating them.
In a New England Journal of Medicine article, the team reported five pediatric transplants using the method, in recipients aged 2 days to 14 years, VUMC said. According to VUMC, recipients waited an average of 20 days, no donor hearts were discarded, and none showed rejection during the study period. VUMC said five more children have since received hearts recovered this way.
VUMC said more than 2,000 children are on the heart transplant waitlist each year, with about 20% waitlist mortality. The hearts in the study came from settings where reanimation was not permitted, so they would otherwise have been unavailable, investigators said.
Ziv Beckerman, MD, surgical director of pediatric heart transplantation at Monroe Carell and the paper's senior author, said the team plans to help other programs adopt the technique.
Source: Vanderbilt Health News, Oct. 7, 2026 (https://news.vumc.org/2026/10/07/monroe-carell-jr-childrens-hospital-at-vanderbilt-leads-breakthrough-heart-recovery-method-for-pediatric-transplants/)