Heart Surgery

[Orleander]

Lets pretend...

I have a tumour in my heart but they can't remove the tumour without killing me. BUT, could they remove my heart, take out the tumour and put my heart back in?

[arauca]

Lets pretend...

I have a tumour in my heart but they can't remove the tumour without killing me. BUT, could they remove my heart, take out the tumour and put my heart back in?

They can give you somebody's heart, > The question is how big is the tumor and the volume is contaminated and if the mass is removed , how functional the rest of the heart will be

But my best wishes to you , even we never meat.

[youreyes]

1. Don't have a tumor in your heart
2. How big is the tumor? Large tumor = heart can't function.
3. Where exactly is the tumor located at?
4. What type is the tumor? myxoma, lipoma, cystic tumor?
5. By which method will this tumor be removed from the heart? surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, palliative therapy?

Heart transplantation is possible thing, gives you 15 years of life afterwards.

In my opinion such a thing would be possible, however details of exact nature of the tumor have to be known.

[Orleander]

OK, the post started as "Let's pretend..."

And if I can get a heart transplant, why can't they just take my heart out, fix it, and put it back in??

[youreyes]

OK, the post started as "Let's pretend..."

And if I can get a heart transplant, why can't they just take my heart out, fix it, and put it back in??

1. The body from which the heart was removed must function under cardiopulmonary bupass machine or artificial heart
2. The removed heart organ would neet to be stored in proper condition (in cold usually on ice
3. Lifeport of "Organ Recovery Systems" is a 17,000$ device that monitors the condition of a removed kidney while it is being transported ... maybe that can somehow be applied to operation on a removed heart?

[Buddha12]

OK, the post started as "Let's pretend..."

And if I can get a heart transplant, why can't they just take my heart out, fix it, and put it back in??

They might have to also remove part of your heart along with that tumor so that your heart wouldn't function as it once did without all the necessary parts of it neing there.

[Fraggle Rocker]

And if I can get a heart transplant, why can't they just take my heart out, fix it, and put it back in??

They have to keep the heart alive during the repair surgery. That is very difficult even when it's still inside your body and hooked up. But to do it while it's totally disconnected? There's a time limit before it dies and can no longer be revived. They'd have to work really fast.

When you remove a malignant tumor, you have to remove all of it. Otherwise the bits that are left will simply continue to regenerate and you'll be right back where you started before very long. So the surgeons have to spend a lot of time making sure that they didn't leave any little bits behind. This is time that they haven't got.

Sure, this is predicted to be the Century of Biology. This kind of surgery may be available to your grandchildren. It will probably involve a lot of nanobots. And of course once nanobots are available to do the work, it will no longer be necessary to remove the heart in order to work on it.

Moreover, by then it might be easier, cheaper and more troublefree to replace it with an artificial one!

Remember the technology curve: Double the performance at half the price, every two years. There are various versions of this but the concept is generally accepted. That's why you have a computer in your wristwatch (does anybody even wear wristwatches anymore?) that has more memory, faster processing, and cost one-millionth the price of the first mainframe I worked on in 1967. Nanobots are hardly an extraordinary prediction.

For that matter, neither are artificial hearts that are affordable, easily installed, and better than the original.

[Kittamaru]

Fraggle - don't they already have artificial hearts more capable than the one we are born with?

[Asguard]

Fraggle - don't they already have artificial hearts more capable than the one we are born with?

No, if they did Chronic CVD wouldn't be the leading cause of death in the US

[Buddha12]

No, if they did Chronic CVD wouldn't be the leading cause of death in the US

But they do have them....

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...fn9GQlxABI705w

[Asguard]

I didn't say we don't have artificial hearts, I question your comment that they are better than the origional because if that was true then people wouldn't be dying waiting on the donor list, people wouldn't be dying after having a third triple bypass because they would just have inserted a mechanical heart which doesn't REQUIRE O2 and glucose.

[Orleander]

They have to keep the heart alive during the repair surgery. ...

why? A heart being transplanted from one person to another isn't being kept alive. Its just being kept viable.

[Fraggle Rocker]

why? A heart being transplanted from one person to another isn't being kept alive. Its just being kept viable.

"Alive" vs. "viable," just a choice of words and I'm not a doctor. Point is, you only have a finite amount of time to get the heart disconnected from the original body and connected to the new one, before it becomes "dead" or "unviable."

[Pete]

Hi Orlie,
If a heart had a tumour so bad that it couldn't be repaired in the body, then I'm pretty sure it couldn't be repaired out of the body either.

For most heart operations (like valve replacements) they set up a bypass machine and stop the heart while they fix it. This means that in principle they could take the heart right out to do the job before sewing it back in again, but you get a much better result by leaving it where it is.

This is partly because it cutting it out and sewing it back in would add a fair bit of time to the operation which makes a bad outcome more likely, but it's mostly because cutting the heart out does it damage.
A sliced open and stitched up again blood vessel isn't as good as one that was never cut.
A severed nerve can take months to heal (if at all), and a denervated heart can't speed up and slow down as it normally would to control blood pressure - it's stuck at about 100 beats a minute. It is also prone to a "silent MI", a heart attack that doesn't give you the standard chest discomfort (because the heart with cut nerves is numb), meaning that it's less likely to be detected and treated.


There are also really cool gadgets where they can hold a portion of the heart wall still enough to actually operate on a beating heart! This isn't really relevant to your scenario - it's just awesome.

[PetAC]

Heart surgery is very importmant...I once suffer Eye bag surgery and Breast plastic surgery.....That make me feel unhappy ....Therefore,you should pay more attention to it after surgery....No matter what happen,you must take care of yourself.

[youreyes]

Heart surgery is very importmant...I once suffer Eye bag surgery and Breast plastic surgery.....That make me feel unhappy ....Therefore,you should pay more attention to it after surgery....No matter what happen,you must take care of yourself.

Umm I don't get the use "Therefore" in your sentence. I mean its non-sequential. But I do get that just having an operation done isn't the end of the deal, gotta take care of the sucker.