Facts About Heart Transplantation

Announcer:

Welcome to Love Your Heart, brought to you by Cleveland Clinic's Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute. These podcasts will help you learn more about your heart, thoracic, and vascular systems, ways to stay healthy and information about diseases and treatment options. Enjoy.

Anthony Zaki, MD:

Hello. My name is Anthony Zaki, and I'm a heart surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic. Today, we're going to talk about five cool facts regarding heart transplantation. The first cool fact regarding heart transplantation is that the first heart transplant took place in 1967. This was a famous surgeon by the name of Dr. Christiaan Barnard in South Africa. Now, Dr. Barnard came to the United States on a visit, learned about the procedure, where much of the research was happening, and was able to go back to South Africa and do the first procedure in 1967. In Cleveland Clinic, the first heart transplant took place one year later in 1968. Now, our program, our heart transplant program, officially began in 1984, and we are celebrating our 40th anniversary of our heart transplant program this year in 2024. Now, to date, we have done more than 2,000 heart transplants here at the Cleveland Clinic.

The second fact about heart transplantation is that a heart can be preserved outside of a body for up to four to six hours. Now, the process is quite complex, but a donor is identified, our team goes and evaluates the organ, and once it's deemed to be suitable for transplantation, the heart is removed from the donor, is preserved, and brought back to the Cleveland Clinic where one of the heart transplant surgeons like myself will implant it in our recipient.

The third fact is that we can transplant multiple organs at a time. So often, people with heart failure who meet criteria for heart transplantation also have either kidney failure or renal failure or lung failure. So what we've been able to do successfully here at the Cleveland Clinic is not only transplant a heart, but at the same time either a lung, a kidney, or a liver. So we have one of the largest programs for multi-organ transplantation, and we frequently do combined organ transplants here at the Cleveland Clinic.

The fourth interesting fact about heart transplantation is that a transplanted heart will beat faster than a normal one. That is because a lot of the nerve connections are not reconnected at time of a heart transplant. They're too small. So how does a heart transplant beat if there's no nerve connections? And what's amazing about the heart is that the heart will beat on its own without any external stimulation. So a transplanted heart, even though the nerve connections are not redone, will beat on its own.

The fifth and last interesting fact about heart transplantation is that many patients can live more than 20 or even 30 years after their heart transplant procedure. Here at the Cleveland Clinic, at one year more than 90 to 95% of our patients are alive and doing well. Now, life after a heart transplant requires a dedicated team to follow you, to manage your immunosuppression, and other medications and procedures. But here at the Cleveland Clinic with our dedicated team of cardiologists, surgeons, nurses, and coordinators, we take care of our patients and ensure a good outcome long-term.

So I want to thank you for tuning in on our five facts about heart transplantation and we look forward to meeting you soon.

Announcer:

Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed the podcast. We welcome your comments and feedback. Please contact us at heart@ccf.org. Like what you heard? Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, or listen at clevelandclinic.org/loveyourheartpodcast.