How does heart transplant surgery work? - Roni Shanoada
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Your heart beats more than 100,000 times a day. In just a minute, it pumps over five liters of blood throughout your body. But unlike skin and bones, the heart has a limited ability to repair itself. So if this organ is severely damaged, there’s often only one medical solution: replacing it. Roni Shanoada explores how this complex and intricate procedure works.
Additional Resources for you to Explore
Now that heart transplants have become relatively routine, the most pressing problem is how to solve for organ shortages. This has involved using organ from previously restricted populations, such as those infected with HIV. This article from NPR describes how the HOPE Act and HIV donors have reduced wait times and organ shortages. Or expanding the donation pool from unexpected deaths, as described here. Further, the use of genetically modified pig heart has been suggested as a way of minding the gap. See here from the University of Maryland.
Read this article and watch this video on left ventricular assist devices that describe left ventricular assist devices (LVAD), which could bridge time to a transplant or possibly replace transplantation altogether.
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Meet The Creators
- Educator Roni Shanoada
- Director Alexia Roider, Zedem Media
- Narrator Addison Anderson
- Storyboard Artist Jeanne Bornet
- Animator Eleni Catherine Demetriou
- Art Director Jeanne Bornet
- Sound Designer Andreas Trachonitis
- Director of Production Gerta Xhelo
- Producer Anna Bechtol
- Associate Producer Abdallah Ewis
- Editorial Director Alex Rosenthal
- Editorial Producer Dan Kwartler
- Script Editor Alex Gendler