A heart transplant may be necessary due to one of several cardiac problems, each of which culminates in generalized deterioration of the heart muscle. The two most common cardiac problems are coronary artery disease and idiopathic cardiomyopathy.

As the cardiac problem progresses, the heart grows weaker and increasingly less able to pump blood. Because the heart works harder but accomplishes less, it may compensate by becoming enlarged (hypertrophied), leading to a condition called Congestive Heart Failure. Eventually, the heart works so hard to pump blood that it may simply wear out. Drugs, mechanical assist devices and other therapies can sometimes stabilize and even improve a patient's condition. When those treatments fail, however transplantation becomes the only therapeutic option.

Our Heart Transplantation Experience

Established in 1982, the transplant program of St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital at the Texas Heart Institute is one of the most experienced and successful programs in the world, having performed more than 600 transplant procedures. Dr. O. H. Frazier, a member of Surgical Associates of Texas, P.A. serves as Chief of Cardiopulmonary Transplantation at SLEH /THI. In the photo at left, a transplantion team surgeon is retrieving a donor heart from a transportation container for implantation into the patient being operated in the background. The donor heart is grafted on to the recepient using several techniques. A heart being implanted using the replacement technique is illustrarted above right. The illustration below right shows a grafted heart already in place (note the sutures).

How to get a heart transplant

In most cases, the patient's regular physician will make the first inquiry about a transplant, and if appropriate, send the patient's records to the transplant team at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital / Texas Heart Institute for review and evaluation. Every transplant candidate must come to SLEH / THI for a complete evaluation. Although this evaluation normally takes three or four days, upon completion of these studies, the transplant team will have determined the severity of the patient's condition, the potential usefulness of other therapies, and the best way caring for the patient while a donor heart is being sought.