Heart transplant 🫀
Heart transplant! ❤️ Here’s a bad heart going out and a new heart going in! On the left is the old heart from the patient receiving a transplant. It is a diseased, dilated, weakened heart due to a restrictive cardiomyopathy with severely reduced output. You can see how enlarged and boggy it appears compared to the healthy donor heart on the right. You can also see the biventricular ICD (implantable cardioverter defibrillator) and it’s leads that has been removed along with it. The new heart on the right that has been freshly explanted from a donor is of normal size, lean and muscular, and ready to take on its new body. Side note: at the time of this photo there is no heart in the patient’s chest! About 3000 transplants are performed in the US per year. Donor hearts can generally survive no more than 4-5 hours outside the body before becoming non-viable. New technology for organ transport may now increase this time and improve access! We’ve learned this heart belongs to