In the first such procedures in Tennessee, Vanderbilt University Medical Center has successfully used technology to bring two donor hearts that stopped beating back to life before transplanting them into patients.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center tied for first place as the busiest heart transplant program by volume in the United States in 2019.

VUMC is expanding its ECMO program from its longtime home in the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit (CVICU) to the Medical (MICU) and Trauma Intensive Care units.

Patients with a form of congenital heart disease — having only one ventricle (pumping chamber) — are now living longer lives due to the successful surgical and medical treatments they receive as children.

Tim Lowell of Hernando, Mississippi, received the first total artificial heart in the state of Tennessee when the cardiac surgery team at Vanderbilt Health placed the device in his chest on Sept. 26, 2018. The mechanical heart kept him alive for nearly three months until a matching human donor heart became available and he was transplanted on Dec. 16, 2018, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Matthew Bacchetta, MD, MBA, MA, has joined the Department of Thoracic Surgery as an associate professor and the surgical director of a new respiratory institute at Vanderbilt University Medical Center that will be launched soon.

Artel Thorpe Sr. of Jackson, Tennessee, recently became the first person in the United States to undergo a new, less invasive surgical technique for implanting a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) heart pump since it was granted Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approval on July 11.