Anatol J Cardiol. 2008; 8(Suppl. 2): 131-147 | |||
Heart transplantationOzan Erbasan, Cemal Kemaloğlu, Ömer BayezidDepartment of Cardiovascular Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Akdeniz University, Antalya, TurkeyEnd-stage heart failure is still associated with a decrease in both quality and prognosis of life and one- year survival of these patients is below 50%. Heart transplantation remains the final therapeutic option for the treatment of irreversible end-stage heart failure in all age groups with adequate success rates. Survival of patients who underwent heart transplantation has improved incrementally in recent years, with 86% survival in the first year and over 50% survival at 10 years. Approximately 50% of patients live for more than 10 years after heart transplantation and 25% of patients live for more than 18 years. Improvement of the quality of life is an other benefit, while the patients were in NYHA class III-IV preoperatively, nearly all of them have an improved functional status with NYHA class I-II after transplantation. However, discrepancy between the number of candidates and number of available donors is still the major problem for the applicability of heart transplantation. Keywords: heart transplantation, immunosuppression, rejection, cardiac allograft vasculopathy, endomyocardial biopsyOzan Erbasan, Cemal Kemaloğlu, Ömer Bayezid. Heart transplantation. Anatol J Cardiol. 2008; 8(Suppl. 2): 131-147 Corresponding Author: Ozan Erbasan, Türkiye |
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