Boy Gets First of Kind Stem Cell Transplant
March 6 -- In the first operation of its kind, doctors used stem cells from a 16-year-old Almont, Mich., boy's own blood to repair his heart after he was accidentally shot in the heart with a nail gun and subsequently suffered a heart attack.
It is hoped that the stem cells will repair and regenerate Dimitri Bonnville's damaged heart and its blood vessels. When the teen was first brought to the hospital after the Feb. 1 construction accident, surgeons immediately removed the three-inch-long nail and repaired the hole in his heart. But it was not apparent until about one day later that he had also suffered a large amount of heart muscle damage.
At that point it was too late to go ahead with traditional heart attack treatments, so doctors at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich., led by Dr. Cindy Grines and Dr. William O'Neill, suggested an experimental treatment that had never been done on any other patient. They would harvest stem cells from Bonnville's own blood, rather than bone marrow, and use those cells to repair his heart.
"He had such a massive heart attack," Grines told Good Morning America in an exclusive interview after the hospital announced the procedure. "It would have left him unable to do many of the things a normal 16-year-old does."
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Initially, when doctors tested the boy's heart muscle, they found that it was working at about 25 percent capacity. Five days after the stem cell transplant, the capacity climbed to 35 percent and doctors expect it to continue to improve as the boy recovers at home. They will know more in three months, Grines said.
Similar transplants have been done — mostly in Europe — using stem cells from the patient's bone marrow, with some apparent success. But the Michigan procedure is significant because getting stem cells from blood is simpler and less painful than getting them from bone marrow.
"With a bone marrow transplant, we have to puncture the bone many times and the patient needs anesthesia in an operating room," Grines said. "Plus you don't get pure stem cells from bone marrow."
