Your heart beats more than 100,000 times a day. In just a minute, it pumps over five liters of blood throughout your body. But unlike skin and bones, the heart has a limited ability to repair itself. So if this organ is severely damaged, there’s often only one medical solution: replacing it. Today, nearly 3,500 heart transplants are performed each year in a complex and intricate procedure with no room for error.
The process begins by testing potential recipients to ensure they’re healthy enough for this demanding operation. Doctors are especially concerned with identifying immunocompromising illnesses or any other conditions that could compromise a patient's chance of survival.
The next step is to match an eligible recipient with a heart donor. Donors are often comatose patients with no chance of being resuscitated or victims of a fatal event whose hearts are still healthy. In both cases, these patients need to be registered as an organ donor or have their families give consent. And even when a heart is available, surgeons can’t just pair any donor with any recipient. The recipient’s immune system will view a transplanted heart as a foreign organism that must be attacked. So doctors need to match recipients with donors that share their blood type and have similar antigens.
If a match can be made, the surgery can begin. Once the donor's heart is confirmed to be healthy, the organ is immersed in an ice slush and injected with a solution to induce cardiac arrest. These treatments stop the heart from pumping to ensure it can be removed cleanly. Surgeons then place the organ in a mix of cold saline and preservation solution.
This is when the clock starts. Disconnected from its blood supply, the heart’s cells start taking on damage from lack of oxygen. The organ will only remain viable outside the body for a few hours, so it needs to reach its recipient as fast as possible.
Once the heart arrives, the recipient is put under general anesthesia. The surgeon makes an incision down the length of the chest, cutting through the breastbone to separate the rib cage and expose the heart. To keep blood flowing while they remove the damaged organ, surgeons use a cardiopulmonary bypass machine. This takes over the heart's job, generating enough force to push blood through the patient's circulatory system.
After the old heart is removed, the surgeon begins sewing the donor heart into place. This is an incredibly precise process, where each blood vessel and artery must be carefully attached to avoid leaks. The procedure can last several hours, potentially longer if there’s scar tissue from previous surgeries. Once it’s finished, the bypass machine is turned off and blood is allowed to flow into the aorta. Doctors carefully monitor the new heart to ensure it’s beating on its own before sewing the recipient back up.
Even after the procedure is complete, there's still work to be done. Surgeons are unable to directly connect the heart to the recipient’s nervous system, and it can take years for the body to fully innervate the new organ. During this period, the transplanted organ has a higher resting heart rate and risk of stroke, making exercise difficult and dangerous. And since it’s incredibly rare to find a perfect match between donor and recipient, the immune system will also have some response to the new heart. Immunosuppressive drugs can help manage the risk of rejection, but they also leave patients open to contracting dangerous infections. It requires constant monitoring and testing to balance these two concerns.
Despite these challenges, about 70% of heart transplant recipients survive for at least five years after the operation, and just over 20% live another 20 years. So when this procedure is successful, it's truly lifesaving. Unfortunately, people in developing countries are often unable to access this surgery, and many viable hearts can’t be donated due to legal and regulatory issues. Thousands of people remain on waiting lists, and many are never able to find a suitable donor.
