Background: The treatment of babies with unrepairable heart valve dysfunction remains an unsolved problem because there are no growing heart valve implants. However, orthotopic heart transplants are known to grow with recipients.
Aim: Partial heart transplantation is a new approach to delivering growing heart valve implants, which involves transplantation of the part of the heart containing the valves only. In this review, we discuss the benefits of this procedure in children with unrepairable valve dysfunction.
Conclusion: Partial heart transplantation can be performed using donor hearts with poor ventricular function and slow progression to donation after cardiac death. This should ameliorate donor heart utilization and avoid both primary orthotopic heart transplantation in children with unrepairable heart valve dysfunction and progression of these children to end-stage heart failure.
Keywords: congenital heart disease; valve repair/replacement.
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