A MAN who was given a new heart by a Clydebank hospital admits it is a "beautiful thing" to still be here after staff were recognised with a prestigious award.

Joe Scott was the recipient of a Donation after Circulatory Death (DCD) transplant at the Golden Jubilee Hospital in Dalmuir, a pioneering procedure where a heart is transferred after circulatory death.

Now, after the NHS Golden Jubilee's Transplant Retrieval Team received an award for Excellence in Organ and Tissue Donation for their "game-changing" work, Joe insists the staff at the hospital are the 'best team' and thanked them for keeping him alive.

He said: "From the moment I entered the hospital all the way until now, the staff have been such a positive force.

“I am now a year and a half after my DCD transplant and it has completely changed my life.

“The skill within the team is second to none, they know their job inside out and every single individual is a specialist at what they do, they are truly the best team I have ever seen and I am so grateful to them and the donor.

“Thanks to the continuous support I have received from the staff, I am now employed, providing a one-to-one mentor service for people with autism, building their skills and confidence so they can gain employment.

“It’s hard to put into words how I feel, it is a beautiful thing to be a recipient.”

Traditionally, donor hearts are still beating and are only removed from individuals who are certified as brain dead. 

However, thanks to advances in technology and the pioneering Organ Care System (OCS) or “Heart in a Box” system, it is now possible to retrieve a heart after circulatory death.

In DCD donors, the heart has stopped beating and been without blood supply for up to 30 minutes and was previously believed that they had sustained too much damage to be successfully transplanted.

The OCS however, allows these hearts to be placed into a specialist machine which pumps warm, oxygenated, nutrient-rich blood to the coronary arteries, allowing the heart to beat again and be repaired and assessed during transportation.

The system also means a donor heart can remain outside of the body for a significantly longer period of time, increasing the availability and window to get these organs to where they are needed.

Simon Messer, Consultant Transplant Surgeon, said: “DCD heart donation has been the biggest game changer in heart transplantation in the last 35 years.

“Thanks to DCD we have seen heart transplant activity increase by up to 35 per cent in the UK, providing life-changing outcomes for our patients.”

The team at NHS Golden Jubilee carried out their first successful transplant of a ‘non-beating heart’ in 2019 and can often be out retrieving a heart and travelling for up to 24 hours at one time.

In 2022/23, 40 patients in Scotland received a new heart at NHS Golden Jubilee – a record number for the centre and the largest number of heart transplants in any one year performed in Scotland since the service started back in 1992.