Between 2004 and 2007, Dr. Mark M. Bouchet and his surgical transplant team removed the hearts from three tiny patients at Denver Children’s Hospital and transplanted them into three tiny patients dying of heart disease. All three of those tiny transplant recipients are alive today.

Bouchet, however, has become the center of controversy because of the strategy he used when removing those tiny hearts from three infants so severely brain damaged that they could not live without the intervention of life-support equipment. As a rule, organs donated for transplanting cannot be removed until a person has been declared dead, with death meaning a complete and irreversible stopping of all brain function or the complete and irreversible stopping of the heart and lungs. Transplant surgeons generally wait two to five minutes after the last heart beat before removing an organ, in the chance that the heart will resume beating spontaneously.

Bouchet didn’t wait that long. Time is the essence of success when dealing with organ donations and transplants. Bouchet’s organ-donor patients were on life-support systems that were disconnected when the babies became organ donors. Bouchet waited three minutes after the last heart beat in the first case but waited only 75 seconds for the second and third cases.

Source: Washington Post