Over the past decade heart transplantation has evolved from a rarely performed procedure to an accepted therapy for severe heart diseases. This procedure performed to people with end-stage heart failure, cardiomyopathy or severe coronary artery disease.

The factor limiting the number of heart transplantations performed is the availability of donor organs. The current criteria for allocation of donor hearts include priority UNOS status, ABO blood group compatibility, body size match and distance from donor center. Donor evaluation also includes various serology results, as HIV, Hepatitis B and C, CMV and Toxoplasmosis.

It is also possible to transplant a heart from another species (xenograft), or implant an artificial heart, although the outcome of these two procedures has been less successful in comparison to the far more commonly performed allografts.

Some patients are not suitable for heart transplantation procedure. Those with kidney, lung, liver diseases, or insulin-dependent diabetes have increased chances of complications.

Allograft donor hearts usually come from people who have died of injuries that have spared the heart. The patient who waits the transplantation is contacted by a nurse coordinator and instructed to attend the hospital in order to be evaluated for the operation and given pre-surgical medication. At the same time, the heart is removed from the donor and inspected by a team of surgeons to see if it is in a suitable condition to be transplanted. If there are no complications, a transplant operation takes about 3 hours to complete. After the surgery a patient stays for about a week in the intensive care unit and after that another week in a private room in the transplant unit.

New heart biopsies are made regularly to be sure that the body doesn’t reject the new organ. Once the patient is released, they will have to return to the hospital for regular check-ups and rehabilitation sessions. The patient will need to take immunosuppressant medication to avoid the possibility of rejection.

Also read