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A Healthy Heartbeat Again With Heart Transplant

By GPT Admin 4 December, 20, 2018

When all the other medical and surgical treatments are failed, in order to save the patient from heart failure or artery disease, a method, a heart transplant is used. The heart transplant is also known as a cardiac transplant. In this process, the patient's original heart is replaced with the donor’s heart. Approximately, more than 3,500 heart transplants are performed every year to save precious lives. It doesn’t cure the heart disease completely, but it at least gives a life-saving treatment to the patient that may increase his lifespan and living standard. Following are the reasons that may cause heart failure in a person:

A weakening of heart muscle ( Cardiomyopathy)
Coronary artery disease
Heart valve disease
A heart problem you have a bone with
Amyloidosis
Failure of a previous heart transplant.
Dangerous recurring abnormal heart rhythms not controlled by other treatments.

Heart failure mostly happens to adults. Children also suffer from heart failure either due to cardiomyopathy or a congenital heart defect. But a heart transplant isn’t suitable for everyone. In order to have a heart transplant, you may have certain factors. Because each case is separately handled by the centers, hence a transplant may not be appropriate for you if:

Advanced age
Have other diseases that shorten your lifespan and quality like kidney or lung disease.
Active infection
Unable to make lifestyle changes properly.

VAD, abbreviated as Ventricular assist device, is another way of heart treatment for those who can’t perform a heart transplant. In this method, an automated pump is ingrained in the patient chest that helps in pumping blood from lower chambers to rest of parts of the body.

Complications of surgery:

Since heart transplant needs open heart surgery, a risk of many other complications automatically increases. Some complications that may happen are as follow:

Bleeding
Infection
Blood clots
Heart attack
Stroke
Death

Risk of Heart Transplant:

Even though a heart transplant is a life-saving method, but it also has some serious risks. Some of them are as follows:

Rejection of a donor’s heart
Problems with your coronary arteries
Medication side effects
Cancer
Infection

After the replacement of heart, it’s a start of your new healthy and enjoyable journey of life. After replacing your heart with the donor’s heart, you are kept in the Intensive Care Unit, i.e. ICU. After some time, you will be moved to regular rooms of the hospital. Normally, after transplant, a patient remains at least a week or two in the hospital. The transplant team will carefully watch over you after the treatment that if you are having any serious symptoms or signs of rejection. You may experience shortness of breath, fever, fatigue, not urinating as much or weight gain. It is important to medicines at the right time and right dose, otherwise it may affect you badly. The chances of infection after surgery also increases. You should also look upon it. After transplant surgery, you need to:

Take care of your incision site.
Take medicines twice a day.
Have follow-up tests and attend all appointments.
Move around.

If you are a heart disease patient and doctor recommended you heart transplant, get in touch with Global Patient Transfer to give you the best options of hospitals providing heart transplant services across the globe.

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