The Know How of Heart Transplant

Organ transplants offer individuals facing serious disability the opportunity to lead more fully-functioning lives. The kidney was the first organ to be successfully transplanted in humans. Nowadays, transplantation is done with the organs like kidneys, liver, pancreas, lungs, , intestines, bone marrow and bones, corneas, skin, saphenous veins, the heart and it’s valves.

Heart Transplant Surgery is the surgical replacement of an unhealthy heart with a healthy one taken from a healthy human donor. The procedure is also referred to as orthotopic cardiac graft.

A heart transplant is performed when congestive heart failure or heart injury can't be treated by any other medical or surgical means. It's reserved for those individuals with a high risk of dying from heart disease within one or two years. Most patients who undergo a transplant have one of the following problems; one is "hardening of the arteries," which means irreversible damage to the heart caused by coronary artery disease and multiple heart attacks,the other problem is heart muscle disease, also known as cardiomyopathy.

In this condition, the heart cannot contract normally because of damage to the muscle cells. It may have been caused by bacterial or viral infection or hereditary factors. Sometimes, heart transplants are also performed on people with other forms of heart disease. These might consist of the effects of rheumatic fever or hypertension (high blood pressure), irregularities in the heart valves which cause injury to the heart muscle, genetic heart defects and also structural aberrations present at birth, or rare situations like heart tumours.

Cardiac Diseases Leading to Transplantation

Severe heart failure most of the time leads to heart transplants and is one of the leading causes of the same. A few summarisedreasons of heart failure are as follows. 

Congenital Heart Disease refers to ailments of the heart that exist at birth and that can affect adult patients in numerous ways. This term encompasses a range of cardiac defects, including atrial septal defect (miscommunication between the right and left atrium), ventricular septal defect (a hole in the muscle which separates the right and left ventricles), and pulmonary stenosis (a narrowing of the valve between the right ventricle and the pulmonary artery).

Cardiomyopathy directly damages the muscle, damaging its ability to propel blood to other parts of the body.  Cardiomyopathy can be of two major kinds: primary cardiomyopathy, demarcated as changes in the structure or function of the heart muscle that cannot be accredited to a specific cause and secondary, which is connected with diseases of the heart or other organs.

Congestive Heart Failure occurs when the heart is incapable of maintaining the adequate circulation of blood in the tissues of the body or to pump out the venous blood returned to it. This weakening of the heart prevents it from circulating the required quantity of oxygen to the tissues of the body.

Valvular Disease in the heart is caused by a number of conditions including congenital defects, such as rheumatic fever, or rheumatic heart disease. In heart valve disease, problems arise when a valve fails to close properly (mitral valve prolapse) or open properly (valvular stenosis). Congestive heart failure, syncope (fainting), and arrhythmias are common signs of valve disease.

While Heart Transplant Surgeries are very common in the current point in time in medical science but it still requires an expert and able pair of hands to get the fragile job done with precision. The Care hospitals are a pioneer in this field in India and are one of the best hospitals in Vizag. Their services and expertise in the field is unparalleled and the family of a patient can be at ease if the patient is in their care.