Heartwarming Gesture to Open Red Cross Tissue Center

Kaitlin Symsek, who was born missing a heart valve and couldn’t walk or crawl until she received a valve transplant, will cut the ribbon today at the grand opening of the American Red Cross Western Regional Tissue Center in Costa Mesa.

“We were very, very lucky that at the time she needed (a heart valve) one was even available,” said Kaitlin’s mother, Debby Symsek.

Symsek said she is grateful to the Red Cross for its tissue program, which gave her 5-year-old daughter the valve, and she wants to communicate the importance of donating hearts and other organs.

The Red Cross center, which this week completed a move from downtown Los Angeles to 3535 Hyland Ave. in Costa Mesa, is the only place in the nation where the Red Cross prepares donated heart valves for transplant into cardiac patients. Six other heart valve processing centers in the United States are run by private companies.

There is a severe shortage of child-size valves, said Cheryl McMahon, a Red Cross director.

“We have about a 20th of the pediatric valves that we need,” she said.

K. David Campagnari, a Red Cross regional director, said the Costa Mesa facility “will be the premier tissue banking center for the entire Red Cross system.”

Its sophisticated equipment, Red Cross officials said, protects the valves from bacterial contamination when they are being treated before they are sent by couriers to surgeons throughout the country. The center, staffed 24 hours a day to process hearts sent from coroners’ offices and hospitals within a day of the donor’s death, supplies about 600 heart valves a year, Campagnari said.

The center will also prepare veins for use in coronary bypass surgery, collect and distribute skin for burn victims and bones for limb repair and spinal surgery. It also will operate a national bone marrow donor registry, Campagnari said.