Only 12 percent of heart transplants are among children, roughly 600 worldwide every year. Most of those surgeries happen in the United States. A teen from Brooklyn Heights received the first transplant ever performed at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone.

18-year-old Maz Zisan was diagnosed with end-stage heart failure before a team of pediatric cardiac surgeons successfully replaced his heart on August 28, 2021. Maz had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a rare heart condition in which the heart muscle becomes abnormally thick, making it difficult for his heart to pump blood to the rest of his body.

“Heart transplantation was the only lifesaving option for Maz to have an improved second chance at life,” says Rakesh Singh, MD, medical director of the Pediatric Heart Failure and Transplant Program, pediatric cardiologist, and associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at NYU Langone. “The successful completion of our first transplant is a testament to the teamwork within Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone.”

Maz was put on the transplant list on April 8 of this year, and on August 26, he got a call that a donor organ was available. 

The transplant procedure was performed by T.K. Susheel Kumar, MD, surgical director of the Pediatric Heart Failure and Transplant Program, pediatric cardiac surgeon, and associate professor in the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery; and Nader Moazami, MD, surgical director of adult heart transplantation at the NYU Langone Transplant Institute.

Watch the segment on ABC7 Eyewitness News.