Practical Leaflets
Heart transplantation
A little bit of history …
On the 3rd of December, 1967, the first heart transplantation had been carried out by Christian Barnard, cardiac surgeon from the South Cape of South-Africa. He was followed only some months later by Norman Shumway from the United States. The pioneers of France are the professors Christian Cabrol, Gérard Guiraudon, et Maurice Mercadier of the Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière, where it was carried out on the 27th of April, 1968
In1986, professors Alain Carpentier and Gilles Dreyfus proceeded to carrying out on a patient the first transplantation of an artificial heart in Europe.
What is a cardiac transplantation ?
Cardiac transplantation is a surgical operation consisting in replacing the sick natural heart by a heart taken from a donor in the state of brain death. The actual problem is the great shortage of donors, whereby we have a stand-by of more than tens of deaths of a patient, while being waiting for a graft.
The average waiting time after inscription onto the list is 4 months.
For which indications this is proposed ?
Cardiac transplantation will be proposed to patients, suffering from severe and irreversible cardiac insufficiency, after having already received the optimal medical treatment.
The most concerned cardiac pathologies are :
- Dilated and ischemic cardiomyopathies
- More rare the valvulopathies,
- Fulminant myocarditis,
- Re-transplantations,
- Cardiomyopathies of children,
- Congenital cardiopathies
How will the intervention be carried out ?
It is a surgical intervention, which has always to be carried out urgently. The receiver will be noticed some hours before the intervention.
How about life after the transplantation ?
You will have to take drugs to prevent rejection of the graft.
