Dale Fuchs in Madrid
Tuesday February 6, 2007
The Guardian

Surgeons at a Madrid hospital claim to be the first to use stem cells from a patient's fat tissue - extracted through liposuction - to improve the patient's heart. The patient, a 67-year-old man suffering from angina and damaged coronary arteries, was recovering at home yesterday after undergoing the five-hour procedure last week.

"It's a medical milestone," Francisco Fernandez-Aviles, chief cardiologist at Gregorio Marañon hospital, said yesterday. "The patient is fine."

Plastic surgeons first performed liposuction on the patient's abdomen to remove the fat and extract and purify the stem cells. Heart surgeons then injected the stem cells into the heart, where doctors hope they will turn into additional heart muscle and blood vessels.

The fat cells were chosen for the procedure because they do not need to be cultivated for three weeks before use, as do stem cells from bone marrow.

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