Heart Transplant

Heart Transplant Criteria

Heart transplantation can dramatically improve a person's life expectancy and quality of life. Because of the scarcity of donor organs, this precious resource must be allocated in a manner to ensure maximum benefit.

The ideal heart transplant candidate is a person with end-stage heart disease for whom conventional therapy is not likely to provide acceptable symptomatic benefit or satisfactorily improve life expectancy.

People who have the following heart conditions may be candidates for transplantation:

• Inoperable coronary artery disease
• Dilated cardiomyopathy
• Hypertrophic or restrictive cardiomyopathy
• Infiltrative cardiomyopathy (including amyloidosis, hemochromatosis)
• Complex congenital heart disease
• Inoperable valvular heart disease
• Hypoplastic left-heart syndrome in the neonate

While there is no firm age restriction, people from birth to beyond 65 years have benefited from transplantation. In some situations, young people with multi-organ disease may be considered for a multi-organ transplant (heart-lung, heart-liver, heart-kidney, heart-lung-liver). Prior heart surgery, diabetes and previously treated malignancies (cancer) do not necessarily exclude a candidate from transplantation.

Some individuals have other life-threatening disorders that make them unlikely to benefit from heart transplantation or put them at greater risk for postoperative complications. The following are general examples of health conditions that may exclude a candidate from heart transplantation:

• Severe pulmonary disease
• Untreated malignancies
• Severe osteopenic bone disease
• Numerous pre-formed antibodies
• Untreated chemical dependency or substance abuse

Transplant candidates must also be willing to adhere to a regimented medical program and work closely with the medical team to maximize the benefits and reduce the risks of transplantation. Mayo evaluates each patient individually. We invite you to contact a member of Mayo's heart transplant team if you have questions about a patient's eligibility.