Florida boy receives state's first partial heart transplant at local children's hospital

A Florida boy is the first patient in the state to receive a partial heart transplant using a "living" valve, following a surgery performed at Nicklaus Children's Hospital.

The patient, Greyson Gonzalez, lives on the west coast of Florida but was born in New York, where he was first diagnosed with a ventricular septal defect—essentially, a hole in his heart.

Greyson's mother, Pietra Archila, recalled the shock of the diagnosis. "I felt my soul leave my body," she said. "I was 27, so I was still a baby. I had no idea. My first son is incredibly healthy, and this wasn't even something that was in the cards".

When it was time to decide on a new procedure, Archila reached out to Dr. David Kalfa at Nicklaus Children's Hospital for a second opinion. Archila discovered that the connection to the surgeon stretched back 11 years. Dr. Kalfa, who recently moved to South Florida to become the Chief of Cardiac Surgery at Nicklaus's Heart Institute, was the surgeon being mentored by Greyson's original surgeon when the boy was 2 months old.

"The operation that we did, the partial heart transplantation or living valve transplantation that we did on Greyson, was actually the first partial heart transplant in the state of Florida," Dr. Kalfa said. He called the technique a "disruptive technology" that will be a "true game-changer" for children with congenital heart defects.

By using a living valve from a donor, the cells on top of the valve are still living, and because they are living after implantation, "they can actually grow," Dr. Kalfa explained. This means Greyson hopefully will not need more surgeries down the road.

Greyson says he has a lot more energy now and wants to try new activities. His mother shared her hope for his future, noting that the obstacle she thought would stop him from "living his life to the fullest is pretty much out of the question."

Congenital heart defects are the most common birth defects, affecting about 40,000 infants in the U.S. each year, with half of those needing an operation to fix or replace a valve. Dr. Kalfa and the team at Nicklaus recently performed the second procedure, this time on a 2-year-old child.