Heart transplantation, or cardiac transplantation, is a surgical transplant procedure performed on patients with end-stage heart failure or severe coronary artery disease. The most common procedure is to take a working heart from a recently deceased organ donor (allograft) and implant it into the patient. The patient’s own heart may either be removed (orthotopic procedure) or, less commonly, left in to support the donor heart (heterotopic procedure); both are controversial solutions to one of the most enduring human ailments. Post-operation survival periods now average 15 years.
When does a person need a heart transplant?
A heart may be irreversibly damaged by long-lasting heart disease or viral infection. People with long-term heart failure, heart muscle disease, or other irreversible heart injury from coronary artery disease and multiple heart attacks that can’t be treated by any other medical or surgical means may be candidates for heart transplants.
When the heart no longer can adequately work and a person is at risk of dying, a heart transplant may be indicated. It involves removing a diseased heart and replacing it with a healthy human heart. Cardiac transplantation is recognized as a proven procedure in appropriately selected patients.
How many people need and receive heart transplants?
There were 2,210 heart transplants performed in the United States in 2007 and 2,192 in 2006.
Each year thousands more adults would benefit from a heart transplant if more donated hearts were available.
In the United States, 73.7 percent of heart transplant patients are male; 67.6 percent are white; 19.9 percent are ages 35–49 and 54.7 percent are age 50 or older.
As of May 30, 2008, the one-year survival rate was 87.5 percent for males and 85.5 percent for females; the three-year survival rate was about 78.8 percent for males and 76.0 percent for females. The five-year survival rate was 72.3 percent for males and 67.4 percent for females.
What is the future of heart transplant?
There are several ways to help patients with end-stage heart disease. One is to get more donors for heart transplant. This will require teaching people the benefits of transplantation in hope of changing society’s attitudes. Better methods of preserving organs and preventing and treating rejection are constantly being developed. In the end, however, there will never be enough donor hearts. Indeed, artificial hearts already exist but have a limited life-span. Patients with artificial hearts are at high risk of developing infection and blood clots related to the device. Better devices are being developed all the time. What about the use of animal organs, also called xenotransplantation? These organs are too “foreign” and thus the problems with rejection are currently insurmountable.
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