The Nation - News from Feb. 14, 1986

The first successful human pulmonary valve transplant in the United States was completed on a 9-year-old Polish boy at a Brown Mills, N.J., hospital, hospital officials said. The pulmonary valve in the heart opens to admit blood to the main artery to the lungs and closes to prevent blood from flowing back into the heart. When valve replacements are needed in humans, they are usually constructed with pig valves. Doctors used a human valve because it was available, hospital spokesman Sylvia Guarino said. The boy, Tomasz Pytel, who suffers from congenital heart disease, is completely recovered and scheduled to fly back home to Poland with his mother this week, she said.