Before you can be placed on the heart transplant list, you will go through a careful screening process. A team of heart doctors, nurses, social workers, and bioethicists will judge whether your are an appropriate candidate for a transplant, based on a number of criteria. These include your medical history, diagnostic test results, social history and psychosocial evaluation results, as well as whether you would be able to survive the procedure and then, comply with the continuous care needed to live a healthy life afterwards.

Upon arriving, staff will promptly take you to the hospital's Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, where you will receive blood tests and a chest x-ray. You and your family should know that there are factors that could cause plans for the transplant to change at any time: among these, the donor heart must be strong and healthy, and you must be free from infections for the transplant to take place.

If all systems are go, you will receive general anesthesia so you will be asleep for the entire operation, which can take from four to twelve hours depending on the situation. You will also be linked to a bypass machine, which will oxygenate your blood while the heart transplant is being performed. For the transplant surgery, an incision about eight or nine inches long will be made along your breast bone, which will expose your chest cavity and heart so they can be worked on. Your surgeon will then open the pericardium (a membrane that covers the entire heart) in order to remove your diseased heart. The back part of your own left atrium will be left in place, but the rest of the heart will be removed. The surgeon will remove your heart, and then attach the donor heart to the remaining part of your atrium, as well as your aorta and other blood vessels. Finally, the surgeon will take you off the heart/lung machine, and close up your breastbone and the skin incision.