Prospects of success after a heart transplant

At the time of the heart transplant, most patients with severe heart failure have had long-standing disease with frequent visits to doctors and regular hospitalisations. Cardiac transplantation leads to a considerable improvement in their general condition and quality of life.

The emotional states after transplantation do not mean that patients find walking easier but rather provide a path to a better life. Most patients accept relatively quickly that they have to take certain precautions and live in close contact with their transplant doctors. Usually, this is even regarded as a certain advantage. There are few groups of people whose health is monitored so closely and continuously as heart transplant patients. The new heart is accepted as one’s own and the heart transplant as the start of a new life that will now be led more consciously than was possibly the case before the transplant.

Heart transplant patients have a good chance of enjoying this new life for a long time. Transplantation medicine has made enormous progress in the last decade. The aim of research is above all to minimise the side effects of the medications and reduce transplant vasculopathy as much as possible. There are promising new approaches.