Heart Team Cautious

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31584, 23 January 1968, Page 22

Heart Team Cautious

(N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, Jan. 22. Auckland heart surgeons are anxious to learn more about ways to control the body’s rejection of “foreign” grafts before they joined overseas colleagues in the heart transplant field it . was stated today. Last week they listened to one of the South African heart team, Dr O’Donovan, a New Zealander, describing at Greenlane Hospital what has been learnt in the two Cape Town operations. Dr O’Donovan summed up the Green Lane attitude: “They are being a little more cautious. Obviously, they are thinking about it.” New Zealand heart surgeons are following overseas developments closely. They are expected to wait for at least six months. In that time they will be able to assess more positively the results overseas. The death at the week-end of the first adult United States transplant patient has reinforced the view that caution is still needed. They will also have seen by then the results of tests —

with kidney transplant patients—of the first supplies of a new serum being devel-i oped in Auckland to fight rejection. The first supplies of this anti-lymphocytic serum are expected to be manufactured locally in May. The first New Zealand heart transplant will be in GreenLane Hospital, but much of the know-how will be drawn from the Auckland Hospital

team which has perfected transplant techniques with i kidneys. The Greenlane team now working on heart valve replacements does not need to ■ worry about rejection—the valves are purely inert transplants—but the kidney workers have experienced the prob- ' lems with immune response that the heart surgeons are having overseas.