A heart transplant is performed to treat heart failure due to disease or injury. A donor heart is removed from a person deemed brain dead. The heart is then transplanted into the recipient.
In general, patients with advance heart failure, on maximal medical therapy should be considered for transplant evaluation. Patients with increasing medication requirements, frequent hospitalizations, or overall deterioration of clinical status should be referred for evaluation. Some causes of heart failure that result in cardiac transplantation are primary cardiomyopathy, coronary artery disease, with either resultant ischemic cardiomyopathy and symptoms of congestive heart failure or inoperable ischemic heart disease with refractory chest discomfort or arrhythmia.
A small percentage of patients who undergo cardiac transplantation do so for idiopathic dialated cardiomyopathy, valvular heart disease, congenital heart disease and inoperable hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. All candidates for transplantation enter the program with a comprehensive series of tests conducted by our multidisciplinary team of specialists. Some of these tests are required for any operative procedure (history and physical chest x-ray EKG etc.) while others (such as specific blood tests) are required for transplantation surgery.
