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Bridge to Transplant with the HeartMate Device
Author(s) -
Piccione William
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
journal of cardiac surgery
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.428
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1540-8191
pISSN - 0886-0440
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-8191.2001.tb00522.x
Subject(s) - medicine , bridge to transplantation , economic shortage , transplantation , destination therapy , ventricular assist device , heart failure , bridging (networking) , heart transplantation , refractory (planetary science) , surgery , intensive care medicine , cardiology , computer network , linguistics , philosophy , physics , government (linguistics) , astrobiology , computer science
A bstract The incidence and prevalence of chronic heart failure continues to increase, with an estimated 400,000 new cases per year in the United States. Cardiac transplantation is an effective therapy but is severely limited to approximately 2300 patients per year due to the donor shortage. With ever increasing waiting times, a significant number of patients become severely debilitated or expire prior to transplantation. A mechanical circulatory support device was first used as a “bridge to transplantation” in 1969. Since then, mechanical devices have increased tremendously in reliability and efficaciousness. The HeartMate left ventricular assist device (LVAD) has been utilized extensively in a bridge to transplant application with excellent results. Patients refractory to aggressive medical management can be sustained reliably until transplantation. In addition, bridging allows for the correction of physiologic and metabolic dearrangements often seen in these severely ill patients prior to transplantation. Nutritional, economic, and quality‐of‐life issues also favor earlier LVAD placement in refractory patients. This report summarizes the overall bridging experience with the HeartMate LVAD and focuses on our experience with this device at Rush‐Presbyterian‐St. Luke's Medical Center.