Congestive Heart Failure – Heart Transplant

Transcript

Heart transplants are quite rare. And even some of the leading centers in the country only would do up to about 40 heart transplants a year. Some of the reasons that it’s so difficult to do a heart transplant is a limited number of hearts that potentially can even be available for a patient that needs a heart. A heart needs to physically fit in them at the right size. The heart needs to be in good enough shape. For example, you wouldn’t take the heart of a 95 year old person who died of heart failure and transplant that into someone that needs a new heart. Just as an example, the LVAD or artificial heart is a device that’s implanted into your life ventricle and kind of serves like your left ventricle, which the purpose is, is to pump blood to your body just as your left ventricle would. An LVAD is not a permanent solution. It’s typically only used as a bridge to transplant as it can be dangerous to have it over a long period of time. Transplant is quite rare. As I mentioned, there’s only about 40 done at a very high volume center in the US. However, there is hope that typically on a case by case basis, sicker patients may be able to get a transplant at a higher rate.