Duke University Hospital in Durham, N.C., recently completed its 1,500th heart transplant, making it the fifth transplant center in the U.S. to hit this milestone, The News & Observer reported Nov. 11.
Surgeons at the hospital completed the 1,500th transplant in late October.
The hospital credits this achievement in part to a new transplant technique known as "donation after circulatory death," which has expanded the pool of donor hearts available for transplants. The process involves using a donor heart from a patient who's died of cardiac arrest.
Duke University Hospital became the first hospital in the U.S. to use this transplant technique last year, according to The News & Observer. In total, Duke's transplant team has performed about 35 such transplants over the past year.
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