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Twin Cities Heart and Lung
Heart Procedures Lung Procedures Vascular Procedures Glossary of Medical Terms
The surgeons at Twin Cities Heart and Lung believe in patient education. We've designed our site to help you learn about procedures so you can understand them and proceed with your treatment with the knowledge to put your fears to rest.
human heart
List of Heart Procedures:

Coronary Artery Bypass

Endoscopic Vein or Artery Harvest
Heart Transplant
Heart Valve Repair and Replacement
MAZE procedure
Off-pump Coronary Artery Bypass
Transmyocardial Laser Revascularization
Ventricular Restoration
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Heart Transplant

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.

If you are approved, your name goes on a waiting list for donor hearts. Since the number of transplant candidate is greater than the number of donors, the wait, unfortunately, can be long and stressful. You will need a supportive group of family and friends during this time. Your health care team will monitor you closely to keep your heart failure in control. Your transplant coordinator will discuss with you how you will be notified if a donor heart is available. The hospital must know where to contact you at all times should a heart become available.

Once a heart becomes available, everything must happen quickly, since a heart can only be preserved for four hours after being taken from a donor. For that reason, you should have a suitcase packed so you will be ready to go to the hospital immediately after you are called. Please do not eat or drink anything after you are called for your transplant.

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.

 

Before and After a Heart Transplant
 
 
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