An American man dying of heart failure received the heart of a Canadian man with ALS who chose a medically assisted death in what is being described as a landmark case of a heart transplant following euthanasia.
Organs have been donated after MAID before, involving liver, kidney or lung transplants.
“Here we report the first case of a successful cardiac transplantation after MAID,” a team of doctors from The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and The Ottawa Hospital report in the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation .
The case involved a 59-year-old man with rapidly worsening heart failure who wasn’t expected to survive more than a month without a new heart.
Ten days after his status on a transplant waitlist was upgraded, “a suitable donor was identified: a 38-year-old male