Breakthrough in Surgery
With Adult Stem Cells
by Rainer Apel
Physicians at the University Clinic in Düsseldorf, Germany on Aug. 24 announced that they had repaired a patient's failing heart, using stem cells taken from his bone marrow. Injected into the arteries near his heart, the stem cells migrated to areas damaged by a heart attack, and turned into healthy muscle cells which began to beat.
Prof. Bodo Eckehard, who carried out the procedure, was quoted in the Germany press: "Ten weeks after the transplantation, the size of the damaged area has shrunk by nearly a third, and the capacity of the heart itself has clearly improved." Eckehard has treated six patients since March, between the ages of 38 and 67, with their own stem cells, and said that after a short period, all showed similar improvement.
"Our results should show that it is possible to do this work without the ethically controversial embryonic stem cells," he said.
