Cardiac allotransplantation is now an established therapeutic modality for end-stage heart disease (1). Although the operative procedure remains essentially unchanged, recent advances in mechanical assist technology and significant advances in the medical therapy of congestive heart failure have changed heart transplantation from an “operation” to a definitive therapy among competing therapies ...

BACKGROUND Patients with end-stage-liver-disease (ESLD) require orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) as treatment. However, cirrhotic cardiomyopathy can be clinically revealed during OLT, with the possible development of a transient overt congestive heart failure. A number of patients require a combined procedure of liver transplantation and heart surgery, which includes heart transplantation...

Congenital heart disease is one of the major diagnoses in pediatric heart transplantation recipients of all age groups. Assessment of pulmonary vascular resistance in these patients prior to transplantation is crucial to determine their candidacy, however, it is frequently inaccurate because of their abnormal anatomy and physiology. This problem places them at significant risk for pulmonary hyp...

Australia has a shortfall in donated hearts for transplantation. Hearts are usually procured from brain dead donors, but procurement from circulatory dead donors is a potential additional source. However, heart transplantation after circulatory death of the donor may not conform to the dead donor rule. An amendment in law is required to permit heart procurement for transplantation after circula...

When transplantation started all organs were retrieved from patients immediately after cardio-respiratory arrest, i.e. from non heart-beating donors. After the recognition that death resulted from irreversible damage to the brainstem, organ retrieval rapidly switched to patients certified dead after brainstem testing. These heart-beating-donors have become the principal source of organs for tra...

objective(s):although previous studies have confirmed the beneficial effects of human umbilical cord matrix stem cell (hucm) transplantation post myocardial infarction (mi), but this stem cell resource has no potential to induce angiogenesis. in order to achieve the process of angiogenesis and cardiomyocyte regeneration, two required factors for cardiac repair agents were examined namely; hucm ...

BACKGROUND Lung transplantation and heart-lung transplantation represent surgical options for treatment of medically refractory idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension. The effect of the lung allocation score on wait-list and transplantation outcomes in patients with idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension is poorly described. METHODS AND RESULTS Adults diagnosed with idiopathic pulmona...

OBJECTIVES We sought to determine the survival experiences of patients bridged to heart transplantation with either intravenous (IV) inotropes or an implantable left ventricular assist device (LVAD). BACKGROUND Because of the operative risks of LVAD implantation and the reported lower mortality associated with inotropic therapy, bridging to heart transplantation with inotropes is thought to b...

Cellular transplantation has been employed for several years to deliver donor cardiomyocytes to normal and injured hearts. Recent reports of a variety of stem cells with apparent cardiomyogenic potential have raised the possibility of cell transplantation-based therapeutic interventions for heart disease. Here we review the preclinical studies demonstrating that intracardiac transplantation of ...

This article highlights trends in heart and lung transplantation between 1997 and 2006, drawing on data from the OPTN and SRTR. The total number of candidates actively awaiting heart transplantation declined by 45% over the last decade, dropping from 2414 patients in 1997 to 1327 patients in 2006. The overall death rates among patients awaiting heart transplantation declined over the same perio...