Heart failure is a major public health problem with significant associated morbidity and mortality. Heart transplantation remains the standard of care for highly selected patients with end-stage heart failure and absence of contraindications to transplantation. This chapter discusses indications and contraindications for transplantation; recipient evaluation, selection, and management; donor selection; timing of the procedure and surgical technique; medical management, including immunosuppression, prevention and treatment of infections, and other standard or preventive therapy; late complications; and functional status and long-term survival. Tables describe patient referral to a specialized center for heart transplantations; guidelines of indications for cardiac transplantation; organ dysfunction; pretransplantation evaluation; waiting lists; therapeutic options for patients with advanced or refractory heart failure; treating highly sensitized patients; suggested vaccinations; guidelines for donor hearts with severe infection; high-risk donor behavior; hemodynamic effect of commonly used parenteral agents; frequency of follow-up evaluations; revised International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) formulation for diagnosis of cardiac allograft rejection and suggested treatment; function of immunosuppressive agents; administration, dosing, monitoring, and adverse effects of commonly used immunosuppressants; common agents that interfere with tacrolimus and cyclosporine; cytomegalovirus prophylaxis and valganciclovir based on estimated renal function; cumulative morbidity rates in adult heart transplant survivors; and therapies to prevent and treat osteoporosis posttransplantation. Figures depict the progression of heart failure; change in functional status over time in patients with chronic heart failure; US heart transplantations in 2012; percentage of US adult wait-listed patients who received a donor heart transplant within a year and donation rates by state; bicaval surgical technique; endomyocardial biopsies; timeline of infection following solid-organ transplantation; cardiac allograft vasculopathy; and squamous cell carcinomas in a heart transplant patient. Graphs show adult worldwide heart transplantation volume from 1982 to 2010; changing characteristics of US adult heart transplant recipients; relative risk of death and development of cardiac allograft vasculopathy; posttransplantation immunosuppression at 1 and 5 years in the ISHLT Registry; older donor age and risk of developing cardiac allograft vasculopathy; freedom from malignancy in the ISHLT Registry; employment status of adult heart transplant recipients; adult heart transplant survival; and patient survival among US heart transplant recipients by gender and race.
This review contains 18 highly rendered figures, 20 tables, and 109 references.
Chronic heart failure in heart transplant recipients: Presenting features and outcome