Heart transplantation

Heart transplantation is surgery that replaces a person’s failing heart with a donor heart. It is used for selected patients with advanced heart failure when other treatments are insufficient.

Orthotopic heart transplantation: A transplant operation in which the recipient’s heart is removed and the donor heart is placed in its anatomical position. This is the standard technique for replacing the failing heart.
Heart failure: A condition in which the heart cannot pump enough blood to meet the body’s needs. Advanced heart failure is the main condition transplantation is intended to treat.
Norman Shumway: An American surgeon whose experimental work helped establish the techniques and science of heart transplantation. His laboratory research laid groundwork for the first successful human procedures.
Heart transplant survival: Outcomes describing how long recipients live and how well transplanted hearts function. Survival statistics show the procedure’s benefits and the limits of long-term graft function.
Heart transplant rejection: An immune response in which a recipient’s body attacks a transplanted heart. Recipient immune cells can damage the donor heart after surgery.
Heart transplant eligibility: Clinical criteria used to determine whether a person is likely to benefit from heart transplantation. Evaluation weighs disease severity, expected benefit, and risks that could undermine success.
Christiaan Barnard: A South African cardiac surgeon who performed the first human-to-human heart transplant in 1967. His operation brought clinical heart transplantation to worldwide attention.
Quality of life: A person’s assessment of physical, psychological, and social well-being. Transplant outcomes include daily functioning and well-being, not survival alone.
Immunosuppressive drug: A medicine that reduces immune-system activity to prevent or treat immune-mediated damage. Recipients take these drugs to limit rejection of the donor heart.
Heart transplant waiting list: A system for prioritizing candidates awaiting donor hearts according to medical urgency and allocation rules. Eligible candidates may wait for a suitable heart under an allocation system.

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