Lee Hall got the gift of life -- and it was still beating when it arrived. 
 
 The 26-year-old Cornwall, U.K. resident was diagnosed with heart failure at age 14. At age 20, he had a mechanical pump installed to keep the blood flowing around his body. 
 
 But Hall got some bad news in May. Doctors said his heart pump cables were infected, and he'd need a new heart within two days or he would die, according to South West News Service. 
 
 But Hall got a lucky break when he learned he had a heart donor. The dead patient's heart was revived for Hall, using a method called a "heart in a box" that keeps the organ beating outside of the donor's body. 
 
 First, doctors provided a passage of warm blood through the donated heart. The blood was heated to reduce tissue damage and oxygenated using a gas exchanger right up until the moment it was transplanted into Hall's body. The method can keep a heart alive for up to eight hours. 
 
 Hall underwent the procedure earlier this summer. He's back home with wife, Danyelle, and their one-year-old son, Hayden. ||||| One of the big issues with heart transplants is simply the number that how many people need a new heart versus the number of available, viable hearts. A box that keeps hearts beating and filled with blood could help. 
 
 More specifically, the OCS Heart by TransMedics could help increase the volume of transplants by potentially opening up the number of possible donors beyond those that are normally accepted. The stereotypical heart transplant begins with a brain-dead donor, whose heart is harvested from a healthy body and cooled for transport. 
 
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 The OCS Heart aims to include folks from outside this pool that have experienced what the MIT Technology Review calls "circulatory death," where the heart stops rather than just being brain dead. It does this by providing a sterile box that feeds blood, oxygen, and nutrients to donor hearts, potentially increasing the amount of time the organ can survive after the donor dies using warm perfusion techniques. Reportedly, it's been used to great effect "in at least 15 cases[.]" 
 
 Without such help, surgeons consider hearts from dead donors too damaged to use. "The device is vital. The heart gets an absolutely essential infusion of blood to restore its energy," says Stephen Large, a surgeon at Papworth Hospital in the United Kingdom, which has used the system as part of eight heart transplants. 
 
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 For now, the device is commercially available in Europe and Australia, but not the United States. According to TransMedics, it's under clinical investigation, which could mean it'll eventually hit the market. The company also has similar devices for transplanting lungs and livers, which could similarly increase the number of potential donors. 
 
 Welcome to the future. It's filled with organs in boxes. 
 
 Source: MIT Technology Review
– The number of hearts available to thousands of Americans requiring a transplant every year could increase by up to 30% if a new piece of medical technology developed in Massachusetts is approved for use in the US, the MIT Technology Review reports. TransMedics' Organ Care System—known as "heart in a box"—is a sterile chamber with oxygen, blood, and nutrient supplies that keeps a heart pumping outside the body until it's ready for transplant. Donor hearts typically come from patients who are brain dead but whose circulatory systems are still functioning, explains the Review. The problem has always been the shortage of brain-dead patients. The OCS changes that, allowing surgeons to remove hearts from the recently deceased and "reanimate" them for transplant—thus opening up a much larger pool of potential donors, notes Popular Mechanics. In fact, doctors say this could increase the number of donated hearts by 15% to 30%. "Cold is the old thing, and warm is the new thing," says a transplant surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, referring to the standard practice of cooling a heart once it's taken from a brain-dead donor. The OCS has already been used for 15 successful transplants in Australia and the UK, including this 26-year-old's in Britain, as highlighted in the Huffington Post. The device remains under "critical investigation" in the US, says the company. A post at Smithsonian points to two drawbacks: The devices are expensive for now at $250,000 apiece, and they'll likely raise ethical questions about when patients should be declared dead. A medical ethicist tell the Review it's all the more important for patients and families to have their plans spelled out in advance. (Next up: Head transplants?)