Echocardiography in Heart Transplantation

Abstract

Orthotopic Heart Transplantation (OHT) is an appropriate treatment for patients with end-stage heart failure, as the beating heart is taken from a donor and will implanted in the normal place of the recipient who has a high chance for post-transplantation recovery, improvement in quality of life, and survival. In recent decades, significant progress has been made in measures needed to control and assess transplant rejection and post-transplantation infections (Stengel et al., Heart 86(4):432–437, 2001).

The first heart transplant surgery technique, described by Shumway, Lower, and Stofer, is known as biatrial anastomosis technique (BAAT) (Bolman, Oper Tech Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 4(2):98–113, 1999; Kitamura et al., Circ J 73(7):1235–1239, 2009), which was later replaced by bicaval anastomosis technique (BCAT) (Locali et al., Arq Bras Cardiol 94(6):829–840, 2010). Other methods such as modified bicaval anastomosis technique (mBCAT) were developed by a group of Japanese heart surgeons as an appropriate heart transplant method (Bolman, Oper Tech Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 4(2):98–113, 1999). In first year after OHT, graft rejection and infections are more common cause of death, and often allograft vasculopathy and malignancy occur 5 year after cardiac transplant, whereas survival rate of patients following OHT has shown dramatic progress due to advances in surgical methods and improvements in management of patients after OHT.