Heart Transplantation
It is infinitely better to transplant a heart than to bury it to be devoured by worms - Christiaan Barnard
image by: Wikimedia Commons
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I Got a Heart Transplant When I Was 13
There's something to be said about the value of a mural. While you sit on a gurney, ruminating on the fact that mere minutes separate you from injections and anesthesia, beholding something beautiful makes the experience more bearable. It softens the blow. If adult hospitals looked more like playrooms and less like prisons, maybe they wouldn't be so feared.
At the beginning of summer each year I sit on the gurney, naked under a cheap linen gown. I'm there for a cardiac catheterization and biopsy that determine whether or not my heart is in rejection. The anesthesia team asks if I still want to go under with gas before something stronger is given through an IV. The answer is…
Resources
Modern heart transplants owe their origins to a fungus found in the dirt
Surgeons around the world were hopeful the development would soon lead to thousands of lives saved. But their patients kept dying; even after successful surgeries, their bodies wouldn’t accept their new organs.
No Cash, No Heart. Transplant Centers Need to Know You Can Pay
When a Michigan woman was told to raise $10,000 for a heart transplant, outrage spread on social media. But experts say “wallet biopsies” are common.
The Guilt and Grief That Comes With Waiting for a Heart For Your Child
“For the longest time I did have it stuck in my head, that I was praying for a heart to come for my child; does that mean I'm praying for somebody's child to die?"
Transplantees Find Catharsis in Holding Their Old Hearts
An initiative reunites transplant recipients with their former organs for education and therapy.
A Brief History of Heart Transplantation
In 1967, a human heart from one person was transplanted into the body of another by a South African surgeon named Dr. Christiaan Barnard in Cape Town. In early December, Dr. Barnard's surgical team removed the heart of a 25-year-old woman who had died following an auto accident and placed it in the chest of Louis Washkansky, a 55-year-old man dying of heart damage. The patient survived for 18 days.
Happy Anniversary, Heart Transplant
In the end, the race to transplant a human heart — a story engagingly told in Donald McRae’s 2006 book, “Every Second Counts” — involved four surgeons, the most compelling of whom were Christiaan Barnard at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town and Norman Shumway at Stanford. The two had been surgical residents together at the University of Minnesota, and by many accounts they had a frosty relationship. Dr. Shumway scorned what he saw as Dr. Barnard’s showmanship, aggressiveness and willingness to cut corners. Dr. Barnard, for his part, was resentful that his colleague seemed to view him primarily as a foreigner from a pariah country.
Heart Transplant What To Expect
Once it is determined that you need a transplant and are a candidate, you will be placed on a waiting list. The waiting time can vary from days to several months depending on organ availability, your blood group, and how ill you are.
Operation: Heart Transplant or How to Transplant a Heart in Nineteen Easy Steps
Enter our virtual NOVA operating theatre, where you will be given a scalpel and perform a heart transplant of your own. Yes, our version of the operation has been greatly simplified. Nevertheless, all of the basic steps are outlined in this feature, and by the end of the operation, you will have a pretty good idea of what's involved in taking the heart of one human and making it work in another.
Personality Transplant
Can a change of heart lead to a change of heart?
The Heart Beats On: The Unlikely Story Behind the World's First Heart Transplant
“It was kind of a mythical event for us South Africans,” says McRae, a South African who was a child when Barnard performed his historic surgery. But reflecting on that time, it’s clear that the government used this surgical feat as propaganda to promote apartheid, something that Barnard unfortunately did not discourage.
I Got a Heart Transplant When I Was 13
Almost a decade later, I know it's a treatment and not a cure.
International Society for Heart & Lung Transplantation
The International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation was created in 1981 at a small gathering of about 15 cardiologists and cardiac surgeons. Today we have over 2900 members from over 45 countries, representing over 14 different disciplines involved in the management and treatment of end-state heart and lung disease.
My Name is Marcela and I Have a New Heart
Marcela spent the first four years of her life in hospital emergency rooms, urgent care facilities and doctors offices. She would break into a sweat just fighting to breathe.
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Heart transplants are done as a life-saving measure for end-stage heart failure when medical treatment and less drastic surgery have failed. Because donor hearts are in short supply, patients who need a heart transplant go through a careful selection process.
Cincinnati Children's
The goal of heart transplantation is to return the patient to as functional a state as possible with the least amount of limitations and best quality of life.
Johns Hopkins
The Johns Hopkins Heart Transplant Program developed an approach to treating congestive heart failure that is reducing hospital admissions, improving the quality of life for patients and lowering mortality rates. Besides an aggressive medical approach, the program stresses intensive education and lifestyle counseling.
Mayo Clinic
Find out what's involved in a heart transplant '' from registering with a heart transplant center and waiting for a donor heart to the heart transplant surgery and post-transplant care.
Texas Heart Institute
The Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital is one of the most experienced, successful programs in the world. Its surgeons have performed more than 1,000 transplant procedures. The key to the program's success is an experienced, highly skilled transplant team.
UpToDate
Cardiac transplantation, also called heart transplantation, has evolved into the treatment of choice for many people with severe heart failure (HF) who have severe symptoms despite maximum medical therapy. Survival among cardiac transplant recipients has improved as a result of improvements in treatments that suppress the immune system and prevent infection. Unfortunately, the number of heart donors has reached a plateau despite an increasing number of potential recipients.
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