TORONTO - A Toronto hospital says it transplanted a heart that stopped beating last month in a Canadian first that has the potential to substantially shorten the long wait for a donor.

University Health Network says the procedure could grow the national donor pool by 30 per cent if the practice is expanded across the country.

That's the case in some parts of Europe and Australia, where the practice was adopted a decade ago.

Dr. Seyed Alireza Rabi led the September surgery in Toronto after having been part of one of the first transplants with a non-beating heart in the United States in 2019.

He was recruited from Massachusetts General Hospital, where he performed heart transplants of this nature upward of 50 times, but Rabi said he still finds it a miracle every time a donor's heart sta

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