The New England Journal of Medicine published the case study on Wednesday, July 16. It details a groundbreaking approach to overcoming barriers to heart donation after circulatory death (DCD) in infants.

“This innovation was born out of necessity,” said Joseph Turek, M.D., Ph.D., senior author of the study and chief of pediatric cardiac surgery at Duke Health. “We were determined to find a way to help the smallest and sickest children who previously had no access to DCD heart donation.”

DCD is a technique that allows heart donation to take place after a circulatory death, rather than brain death (once the standard in donation), as long as the functionality of the heart can be assessed on a perfusion device. DCD has previously been used in adult and adolescent transplants, but existing perfusion devices are too large to fit infant hearts.