Transplantation of solid organs has become the standard of care for many life threatening medical conditions.
A heart transplant is surgery to remove a person’s diseased heart and replace it with a healthy heart from a deceased donor. Ninety percent of heart transplants are done on patients who have end-stage heart failure, a condition in which the heart is damaged or weakened and can’t pump enough blood to meet the body’s needs. “End-stage” means the condition has become so severe that all treatments, other than heart transplant, have failed.
Heart transplants are done as a life-saving measure for end-stage heart failure when medical treatment and less drastic surgery have failed. Survival rates for people receiving heart transplants have improved over the past 5 to 10 years, especially in the first year after the transplant. About 88 percent of patients survive the first year after transplant surgery, and 72 percent survive for 5 years. The 10-year survival rate is close to 50 percent, and 16 percent of heart transplant patients survive 20 years