Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Patient first to receive new procedure for heart failure
MIAMI (WSVN) -- Doctors performed a successful breakthrough in science after using stem cells in a first-of-its-kind treatment for heart failure.
Doctors at the Miller School of Medicine at Jackson Memorial Hospital have begun a new clinical study that hopes to treat heart failure by using adult stem cells.
Six weeks ago, a 56-year-old man, whose had previous heart attacks, had bone marrow removed from his hip. Hundreds of millions of stem cells were cultivated in a lab.
Finally, on Monday, those cells were injected into the scar tissue in his heart in hopes of reversing the damage. "We performed a three-vessel bypass surgery, and, after that, we injected the material into the study of the vessel of the scar," said heart surgeon Dr. Si Pham.
The study, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health, is performed in conjunction with Johns Hopkins University and will eventually include 44 other patients.
The hope is that this procedure will one day replace heart transplants and eventually help cure other diseases. "This is another exciting feature of the study. The very sophisticated way to look at the patients, the M.R. images will allow us to look very specifically to see whether or not we've regrown new heart muscle or not, so,we would be able to tell whether the cells regrow heart muscle, which is the key issue we're trying to achieve here," said Dr. Joshua Hare.
It remains unclear whether the patient received the stem cells or if he got a placebo. Doctors will monitor the patients for 18 months after their surgeries to see if in fact the stem cells turn into healthy heart tissue.
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