Pioneering in heart transplantation in infancy and childhood

Heart defects are among the most common congenital diseases. One percent of all newborn infants come into the world with a cardiac malformation. Thanks to major advances in paediatric cardiology and paediatric cardiac surgery, nearly 90 percent of the little patients reach adulthood today.

Our technical equipment and the skill of highly specialised surgeons allow heart diseases in childhood to be treated at an internationally recognised level. A rapid increase in experience in recent years has today made it possible to perform orthotopic heart transplantation in childhood to treat irreversible myocardial pump failure or severe structural heart defects. Orthotopic means that the new heart is implanted in the original position of the old heart. Furthermore, under certain conditions, heart-lung transplantation is also possible.

With over 70 organ transplants so far, the cardiac surgery clinic of Munich University Hospital is one of the few transplantation centres for children in Germany in the field of heart transplantation and heart-lung transplantation in infancy and childhood.