Type of Surgery
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Last updated: 11/24/2009
Heart transplantation is performed on patients with end-stage heart failure or some other life-threatening heart disease. Before a doctor recommends heart transplantation for a patient, all other possible treatments for his or her disease must have...
been attempted. The purpose of heart transplantation is to extend and improve the life of a person who would otherwise die from heart failure. Most patients who have received a new heart were so sick before transplantation that they could not live a normal life. Replacing a patient's diseased heart with a healthy, functioning donor heart often allows the recipient to return to normal daily activities.
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This 3D animation explains how the heart muscle contracts to pump blood throughout the body. The action of cells at the microscopic level affects the function of the entire cardiovascular system, as the video explains.
For a heart transplantation, the area around the heart is exposed through a chest incision (A). The blood vessels leading to the heart are clamped, and the heart function is replaced by a heart-lung machine. The diseased heart is removed (B). The donor heart is placed in the chest, and the left atrium is attached (C). The right atrium is connected (D), and the aorta and pulmonary artery are finally attached (E). (Illustration by GGS Inc.)
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Other Information
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). It is also possible to take a heart from another species (xenograft), or implant a man-made artificial one, although the outcome of these two procedures has been less successful in comparison to the far more commonly performed Bold textallografts.
Other Information
In 2006, 2,192 heart transplantations were performed in the United States. There are 257 transplant hospitals in the United States, 135 of which perform heart transplantations. (http://www.unos.org/)
From: Unos.org
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