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September 19, 2025
Heart transplantation is one of modern medicine’s most remarkable achievements, offering hope to patients with end-stage heart failure. Every year, patients around the world face life-threatening heart conditions that cannot be treated through just medication or surgery alone. For these types of patients, a heart transplant can be a life-changing event and mean the difference between life and death. Heart transplant, according to the Mayo Clinic, is an operation in which a healthier donor heart replaces the failing heart of the patient. A heart transplant is usually reserved for patients whose condition does not improve enough through the given medications or surgeries. While a heart transplant is a big operation, the chance of survival is high with good follow-up treatment afterwards.
Some diseases cannot be cured, such as cardiomyopathy (a weakening of the heart muscle), coronary artery disease, heart valve disease, a heart problem you’re born with (congenital heart defect), dangerous recurring abnormal heart rhythm (ventricular arrhythmias) not controlled by other treatments, or failure of a previous heart transplant. Therefore, in order to treat these diseases, heart transplant is needed.
However, although the heart transplant can save one's life, there are risks that follows. According to the Mayo Clinic, risks of heart transplant are rejection of the donor heart, primary graft failure, problems with your arteries, medication side effects, cancer and infection. As someone else’s organ is transplanted into the patient’s body, their body can reject the donor’s heart, leading to further heart damage even after the heart transplant. Primary graft failure can happen and with this condition, the patient can die within the first few months from the heart transplant as the heart does not function correctly. Arteries can have issues as the walls of them in heart could thicken and harden, leading to cardiac allograft vasculopathy. This can affect blood circulation, leading to heart attack or further heart conditions. Medication side effects are also a possibility like all other transplants as the immunosuppressants that has to be taken throughout the life can cause kidney damage. Finally, cancer and infection are also caused by immunosuppressants as they increase risk of developing cancer and decrease the ability to fight infection.
A heart transplant is one of the biggest procedures one can go through in their life and also a life-changing procedure that can determine life and death. Although one is granted a chance to get a heart transplant, it is important to pay attention to any post-procedural symptoms and take a good care of their body in order to live well with the new heart.
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