What Is Done When a Suitable Heart Is Found for a Heart Transplant?

What Is Done When a Suitable Heart Is Found for a Heart Transplant?

The preparation process begins for patients matched with a suitable donor. After all preparations are completed, part of the heart transplant team goes to the relevant center to prepare the donor heart. The other part of the team prepares the recipient for surgery. When the recipient and donor are ready, the heart transplant operation is performed.

What Are the Risks of a Heart Transplant?

The most important risk after a heart transplant is rejection of the donor heart by the recipient. The recipient's immune system perceives the donor heart as foreign tissue and tries to remove it from the body. To prevent this, all patients who have had a heart transplant are given medications that suppress the immune system after the transplant. Even so, signs of tissue rejection appear in about 25% of patients in the first year after the transplant. When such signs appear, treatment is usually possible by adjusting the medication. If the medication is not adjusted, or if the patient does not follow the adjustment, tissue rejection can be very severe. For this reason, it is very important for patients who have had a heart transplant to follow their doctors' recommendations.

Other risks:

• Arterial problems. After the transplant, thickening and hardening may occur in the coronary vessels of the heart. This can impair the blood supply to the heart and lead to events such as heart attack, heart failure, rhythm disorders and sudden death.

• Side effects of medications. The immunosuppressive medications that must be used for life after the transplant can cause organ damage, especially in the kidneys.

• Cancer. Medications that suppress the immune system can increase the risk of cancer. The risk of developing skin, lip and blood cancers in particular may increase.

• Infections. Medications that suppress the immune system reduce the body's ability to fight infections.

Heart Transplant Surgery

The transplant operation takes about 4 hours. This time may be longer in patients who have previously had heart surgery or if a complication develops during the operation. The patient's chest cavity is opened, the patient is connected to a heart-lung machine, and the heart is taken out of circulation. The patient's heart is removed and the prepared donor heart is attached to the patient. The patient is disconnected from the heart-lung machine and the procedure ends. After the operation, the patient is monitored in intensive care. The length of hospital stay is about 1-2 weeks. At the discharge stage, the patient's medication treatment and cardiac rehabilitation program are arranged.