Recipient selection and management.

Abstract

Cardiac transplantation remains the definitive surgical solution for Stage D heart failure. However, the lack of availability of donor organs makes patient selection crucial to appropriate resource utilization. All feasible medical and surgical alternatives should be explored before consideration of transplantation is undertaken. A cardiac transplantation evaluation should be thorough to exclude patients with preexisting serious comorbidities, with particular attention being paid to renal dysfunction, pulmonary hypertension, and panel reactive antibody levels. Once accepted for listing as a cardiac transplantation recipient, patients are assigned a priority status based on the severity of illness. Organs are allocated on the basis on status level, blood type, body size, and length of time at a given status level.