{"id":284274,"date":"2026-02-14T19:52:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T19:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/284274\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T19:52:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T19:52:21","slug":"time100-health-aaron-williams-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/284274\/","title":{"rendered":"TIME100 Health: Aaron Williams | TIME"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"rich-text self-baseline font-graphik text-body-large text-black-coffee mb-0 focus-visible:outline focus-visible:outline-black-coffee focus-visible:outline-2 focus-visible:outline-offset-2 focus-visible:shadow-focus-color text-left\" data-testid=\"paragraph-content\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.templehealth.org\/about\/blog\/why-temple-is-a-leader-in-heart-transplants#:~:text=About%205%2C000%20heart%20transplants%20occur,need%20of%20a%20donor%20heart.\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Worldwide<\/a>, only about 5,000 people each year get a heart transplant, from a waitlist of 50,000, in part because most donated hearts must be harvested still beating from people who have been declared brain dead. Many more could come from donors whose heartbeat and breathing have stopped, if only those hearts could be better preserved. Now there may be a way. A team at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, led by Dr. Aaron Williams, assistant professor of cardiac surgery, has developed a preservative fluid that includes oxygen-rich <a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/6248597\/how-cells-keep-us-alive\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">red blood cells<\/a> and a muscle relaxant with which the heart can be flushed before being placed in a cooler\u2014immersed in the solution\u2014for transit. The team <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nejm.org\/doi\/full\/10.1056\/NEJMoa2500456\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> the results of early trials in July, and further <a href=\"https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jama\/article-abstract\/2844448\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">results<\/a> in January, which showed the solution could triple the time the heart can survive outside of a body from as little as four hours to as many as 12, potentially increasing the distance a heart can be flown to a recipient. \u201cThis technique is allowing us to provide access to hearts to a lot of people who wouldn&#8217;t otherwise get them,\u201d says Williams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Worldwide, only about 5,000 people each year get a heart transplant, from a waitlist of 50,000, in part&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[54805,13687,134,527,10005,4974,111,139,69,54807,16498,156689],"class_list":{"0":"post-284274","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-accolades","9":"tag-franchise","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-healthcare","12":"tag-list","13":"tag-magazine","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz","17":"tag-special-project","18":"tag-sponsorshipblock","19":"tag-time100-health-2026"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}