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‘Beating heart’ transplants could boost success rate

By Liz Kowalczyk

 |  Globe Staff  

  January 11, 2012

Amy DeStefano was a single mom juggling family life and a full-time job three winters ago when she caught what at first was just a persistent February cold. Then it spiraled into pneumonia and spread to her heart. By last January, at age 39, DeStefano was on the waiting list for a heart transplant at Massachusetts General Hospital, and late last month, the Portsmouth, NH, social worker became the first patient in New England to receive an experimental “beating heart’’ transplant.

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