The operation set up with the Biomedicine Agency is unprecedented. A few days ago, in Nancy, there was a real race against time so that a heart taken at the CHRU could benefit a patient awaiting a transplant in another region of France. That day, the weather conditions prevented any flight from taking place in Lorraine. However, in terms of heart transplants, every minute counts: “They must indeed be transplanted within four hours”, explains Dr Hélène Grégoire, medical coordinator in charge of the organ and tissue harvesting unit at the Nancy CHRU. . “‘This is why the air route is preferred,” she says.
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Usual for the kidneys
At a time when transplants are very precious, where the waiting lists for transplants are constantly growing, all the solutions will be considered by the teams. That of the TGV is retained: frequent for the transport of kidney transplants, it is a first in France for the transport of a heart transplant. But we have to go fast.
“Usually, says Dr Grégoire, it is the heart transplant teams who come to take the sample and leave with the heart”. What they cannot do that day without theft. Nancy’s cardiac surgeons will then harvest the organ for their colleagues.
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Escorted by the police
In the process, the graft was then “entrusted to the station master who himself handed it over to the TGV master”, says Dr Hélène Grégoire. The container traveled in the cabin of the captain and the driver. On arrival, the heart was taken over by secure transport and escorted by police forces.
The collection coordinating nurses who are in charge of making every effort to optimize and coordinate organ donation, although used to managing the slightest grain of sand that could come to stop this chain, lived this day- there “a famous blow of stress”, relates Dr. Grégoire. The heart had to leave the CHRU on time so as not to miss the TGV, “otherwise there was no solution, the graft was lost”.
The heart, whose destination remains secret to preserve the anonymity between donor and recipient, could be transplanted. Complete anonymity is one of the three principles that govern organ donation in France, with presumed consent and free donation. It is for this reason that we do not give here either the date of the removal, the transplant, or the place of arrival of the organ.
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