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Key Points
- A heart transplant is an operation in which the
diseased heart in a person is replaced with a healthy heart from a deceased
donor.
- Heart transplants are done as a life-saving
measure when medical treatment and less drastic surgery have failed. Most heart
transplants are performed on patients with end-stage
heart
failure.
- Donor hearts are in short supply, so patients
who need a heart transplant go through a careful selection process at a heart
transplant center.
- Patients who are eligible for a heart transplant
are placed on a waiting list for a donor heart. Policies on distributing donor
hearts are based on the urgency of need, the organs that are available for
transplant, and the location of the patient who is receiving the heart. Organs
are matched for blood type and size of donor and recipient.
- Waiting times for a donor heart vary from days
to several months.
- Heart transplant surgery usually takes about 4
hours. Patients might spend the first days after surgery in the intensive care
unit of the hospital.
- The amount of time a heart transplant recipient
spends in the hospital will vary with each person. It often involves 1 to 2
weeks in the hospital and 3 months of monitoring by the transplant team at the
heart transplant center.
- Once home, patients must carefully check and
manage their health status. Patients will work with the transplant team to
protect the new heart by watching for signs of rejection, managing the
transplant medicines and their side effects, preventing infections, and
continuing treatment of ongoing medical conditions.
- Risks of heart transplant include failure of the
donor heart, complications from medicines, infection, cancer, and problems that
arise from not following lifelong health care plans.
- Lifelong health care includes taking multiple
medicines on a strict schedule, watching for signs and symptoms of
complications, keeping all medical appointments, and stopping unhealthy
behaviors such as smoking.
- Survival rates for people receiving a heart
transplant have improved over the past 510 yearsespecially in the
first year after the transplant. About
88 percent of patients survive the first
year after transplant surgery.
- After the surgery, most heart transplant
recipients (about 90 percent) can come close to resuming their normal daily
activities.
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What Are the Risks Links
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