Partial Heart Transplant – Initial Experience

Joseph Turek, MD, PhD, MBA is an academic pediatric cardiac surgeon. Since 2017, he has served as chief of pediatric cardiac surgery and executive co-director of Duke Children’s Pediatric & Congenital Heart Center. Prior to Duke, he held a similar leadership role at the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital from 2012-2017.

Dr. Turek graduated from Northwestern University (biochemistry) and received his MD/PhD (pharmacology) from the University of Illinois (Chicago) with AOA distinction. He completed general surgery education at Duke University, where he also finished a cardiothoracic surgery residency. Dr. Turek completed a congenital cardiac surgery fellowship at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He received an MBA with Health Sector Management concentration from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business.

Dr. Turek is a surgical innovator, developing novel operations and introducing new products to patients with congenital heart disease. Most notably, he performed the world’s first co-transplant of a heart and cultured thymus tissue, in an operation that could usher in an era of organ transplant tolerance. In another highly innovative operation, he performed the world’s first partial heart transplant for a newborn without functioning aortic or pulmonary valves, maintaining growth capacity of the newly implanted valves. Additionally, he led the team at Duke in completing the nation’s first pediatric donation after circulatory death heart transplant with ex vivo reanimation and then did the same with in situ reanimation and transport, as a means to expand the already limited donor pool of available organs. His clinical passion and expertise lies in high complexity neonatal heart surgery.

Dr. Turek has published over 150 peer-reviewed manuscripts. He maintains a well-funded research laboratory with projects spanning from basic science to translational to clinical research, in areas such as heart transplantation tolerance, living root transplantation, and Marfan syndrome.