When your child has a heart transplant
You or someone in your family has heart failure that is not amenable to standard medical or surgical therapy. The heart is too weak to pump enough blood to the body. As a result, the heart transplant team recommends a heart transplant so that you or your family member will experience the best possible quality of life.
What conditions require heart transplants?
Severe weakening of the heart muscle and extensive congenital heart problems are the most common conditions that eventually require heart transplants.
How many children in the United States need heart transplants?
Check the latest statistics from the United Network for Organ Sharing.
Heart transplantation at Children's Memorial
Since 1988, more than 100 cardiac transplantations have been performed on infants and children with complex congenital heart disease, cardiomyopathies, and life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias. During the last five years, these transplants have been performed with 100% operative survival. The youngest child transplanted was three hours old; the oldest was seventeen years old. The overall survival rate is excellent; with 90% survival for the first year and 70% after five years.