Whoops! The donor heart is dropped in the street outside the transplant centre in Mexico City as the chilled travel box tips up
The heart, in the yellow plastic bag, was quickly picked up and shoved back into the ice box before it was taken into the Mexico City hospital to be transplanted. The operation was a success.
Bungling medics dropped a donor heart in a city street just yards from the medical centre where a life-saving operation was about to be performed.
Moments after the helicopter transporting the donor organ landed in a Mexico City street a stethoscope-wearing medic jumped from the aircraft assisted by one of the pilots as a patient waited in a nearby hospital.
The doctor was helped by another medic who took control of the blue coolbox used to keep the organ stable and chilled during transport.
It was then that things started to go wrong.
Mexico City police say they used a helicopter to deliver the heart to the hospital in a 'rapid, precision manoeuvre'.
The heart had been flown 450km from Leon, Guanajuanto to the Centro Medico de Enfermedades Reumaticas in Mexico City.
But in the few short steps from the helicopter landing pad to the hospital entrance the two medics managed to topple the wheeled coolbox spilling the plastic-wrapped heart onto the tarmac.
The heart had then to be scooped up from the street, along with the ice and accompanying medical fluids, before it could be used in the complicated procedure.
Only after it had been repacked in ice was it taken inside to the waiting transplant team.
Falcony Rodrigo Lopez, director of the hospital, confirmed to local media that the operation had been a success.
The Health Department confirmed that the recipient was at the hospital during the incident.
Heart transplants are carried out on patients suffering end-stage heart failure or severe coronary artery disease.
A heart deemed suitable for transplantation can survive for between four and six hours if packed in ice for transplantation.
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