Two months ago, eminent doctors in Australia successfully transplanted a 'dead heart'. The heart that had stopped beating inside a donor's chest, into a 57 year old woman as per the reports published by the BBC.
The surgery emerged as a great success because, for the first time, it did not involve a brain-dead donor who's heart was still beating and working normally.
Normally, heart transplants call for the removal of a still-beating heart that's put on ice for a few hours until it can be placed in a recipient. But two months ago, that didn't happen. Doctors removed a heart that had stopped beating, and placed in a machine called a "heart-in-a-box." That machine then revived the heart by pumping warm blood into it.
This technique successfully eliminates the current requirement for patients who have got dead brain. This means it would one day definitely increase the number of hearts available for transplantation. It's even easier than other conventional methods of surgery, as it reduces the number of heart cells that die during the transplant process, and limits the amount of damage caused by lack of oxygen.