Centre for Heart Failure, Transplantation and Extracorporeal Support

Lead: Professor Michael Burch

Group Members: Dr Richard Issitt, Dr Matthew Fenton, Dr Timothy Thiruchelvam

Location: Zayed Centre for Research into Rare Disease in Children, 20 Guilford Street, London WC1N 1DZ

Overview

The UCL Centre for Heart Failure, Transplantation and Extracorporeal Support is a multidisciplinary clinical and translational research group focussed on improving the lives of children with heart failure, whose clinical course often requires forms of artificial circulatory support and ultimately, heart and/or lung transplantation. The Centre is based in the Zayed Centre for Research into Rare Diseases in Children and is home to the largest children’s heart and lung transplant service in the UK at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Recent Highlights

Our centre developed a novel technique known as “intraoperative immunoadsorption” which doubled the number of children able to receive a blood group-incompatible heart transplant, giving them new hope of a longer and healthier life, whilst minimising blood and blood product donations.

Our centre performed the world’s first paediatric heart transplant using a portable organ perfusion system known as the TransMedics heart Organ Care System (OCS), to enable donation after circulatory death (DCD), successfully expanding the donor pool and increasing the number of transplants for eligible children in the UK by 50%.