Heart Transplant: Overview

Transcript

In some patients, whatever the etiology of their heart disease, the disease is so far advanced that the heart itself is unable to meet the metabolic demands. And in these patients who tend to be in shock, we try to give them a new heart, and that heart is from a donor. So some of you out there are listed as donors. If you should have a situation where you’re no longer viable, we would be able to take that heart and put it in somebody who could use it to live longer. Now, more and more, there are hearts being designed in animals to have human antigens so that we can actually use those hearts for transplantation. But those are yet experimental.