Baby’s Life-Saving Heart Transplant Makes Medical History

Little Easton Sinnamon was born with a condition that caused him to have only one half of a functioning heart, which led him to need open heart surgery at just five years old.

In addition to this, he also had a damaged thymus, which made the heart condition even more serious.

The thymus is a soft organ that rests on the heart and functions as a “schoolhouse” for immune cells. As cells pass through the thymus they are trained to become T cells, white blood cells that fight infection.

His surgery was just partially successful, and doctors knew he would need a full transplant in order to survive.

Easton’s transplant made history after researchers at Duke University got FDA authorization to perform a transplant of both his heart and tissue from a donor’s thymus.

Doctors performed the heart transplant and then replaced his thymus two weeks later. The new thymus will help his body accept his new heart.

Thankfully, Easton is doing well and he is now recovering at home with his family.

Doctors hope this first-of-its-kind transplant surgery will be the first of many in the medical world.

Dr Joseph Turek, Duke’s chief of pediatric cardiac surgery, said the surgery could be repeated with other organs such as kidneys and livers, and could help thousands of patients who need transplants down the road.

This could make transplants more successful by reducing the chance of the body rejecting the donated organ, and could also reduce the need for patients to spend their whole life on medications.

“I hope that as he gets older he gets to be proud of his scars and know that he not only got to save his own life but got to save other people’s lives as well,” Easton’s mother, Kaitlyn, told the Independent.

Hear this inspiring story in the video below:

Provide Mammograms

Support those fighting Breast Cancer at The Breast Cancer Site for free! →