Key Points

• A heart transplant is surgery to remove a person's diseased heart and replace it with a healthy heart from a deceased donor.
• Heart transplants are done as a life-saving measure when medical treatment and less drastic surgery have failed. Most heart transplants are done on patients who have end-stage heart failure.
• Donor hearts are in short supply, so patients who need a heart transplant go through a careful selection process at a heart transplant center.
• Patients who are eligible for a heart transplant are placed on a waiting list for a donor heart. Policies on giving out donor hearts are based on urgency of need, the organs that are available for transplant, and the location of the patient who is receiving the heart. Organs are matched for blood type and size of donor and recipient.
• Waiting times for a donor heart vary from days to several months.
• Heart transplant surgery usually takes about 4 hours. Patients might spend the first days after surgery in the intensive care unit of the hospital.
• The amount of time a heart transplant recipient spends in the hospital will vary with each person. It often involves 1 to 2 weeks in the hospital and 3 months of monitoring by the transplant team at the heart transplant center.
• Once at home, patients must carefully check and manage their health status. Patients will work with their transplant teams to protect their new hearts. The team will watch for signs of rejection, manage the transplant medicines and their side effects, try to prevent infections, and continue treatment of ongoing medical conditions.
• Risks of heart transplant include failure of the donor heart; complications from medicines; infection; cancer; and problems that arise from not following a lifelong health care plan.
• Lifelong health care includes taking multiple medicines on a strict schedule, watching for signs and symptoms of complications, keeping all medical appointments, and stopping unhealthy behaviors (such as smoking).
• 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.
• After the surgery, most heart transplant recipients (about 90 percent) can come close to resuming their normal lifestyles.