First US Use of Patient's Own Stem Cells to Repair Heart

For the first time in the United States, doctors have used bone marrow stem cells from a patient's own blood to repair heart damage resulting from a heart attack. The doctors hope the stem cells will regenerate damaged heart tissue and stimulate the growth of new blood vessels.

The patient, a boy of 16, suffered a massive heart attack caused by swelling that caused pressure on his coronary artery, leaving him with no option but a heart transplant. By coincidence, doctors at the hospital had been preparing for a clinical trial of stem cells. The experimental treatment began with putting the patient on a four-day regimen of a drug (Neupogen) that stimulates the production of stem cells. Four days later, they harvested the patient's stem cells with a special blood collection machine, then used a heart catheter to transplant the stem cells into the patient's left anterior descending artery, which supplies blood to the heart.

Although there is no proof as yet that the therapy is working, doctors report that the patient's ejection fraction, which had fallen from 65-25%, rose to 35% several days after the operation. Positron emission tomography (PET) scans taken prior to the procedure showed no viable heart muscle in the area affected. The doctors plan to take another scan in three months to determine if new muscle is shown there as a result of the treatment.

"The transplant went exactly as planned, lasting less than 60 minutes,” says Steven Timmis, M.D., who performed the stem cell transplant at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak (MI, USA). "Dimitri tolerated the treatment very well, experiencing no complications.”




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