Heart transplants: need versus availability.

Abstract

Every year in the US heart failure accounts for roughly 60,000 deaths and is the contributing cause in another 300,000 deaths. The two-year survival rate for patients with advanced heart failure is less than 50%, with the incidence of death at 106 in 100,000, more than that for AIDS and breast cancer combined. As these figures attest, the economic burden is quite extensive. The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare estimate a cost of $10 billion a year for this diagnosis alone. Both the human and financial cost have impelled doctors and researchers to improve their capacity to treat heart failure both through conventional methods and, in the most serious cases, through transplantation. Many pioneers have either directly or indirectly contributed to our ability to treat heart failure. Among these early researchers were: Dr Alexis Carrel, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work in vascular anastomosis; Dr John Gibbon, who did important work in the development of the cardiopulmonary bypass machine; Drs Normal Shumway, Richard Lower, and Demikhov, who developed heart transplant procedures in the canine model; Dr Christian Barnaard, who performed the first technically successful human-to-human heart transplant (1967); and Dr Thomas Hardy, who attempted the first xenotransplant (1963). While these achievements were phenomenal advances, long-term survival for transplant recipients was minimal until progress was made in immunosuppressive techniques.