title: Heart transplantation.
abstract: End-stage heart failure is still associated with a decrease in both quality and prognosis of life and one- year survival of these patients is below 50%. Heart transplantation remains the final therapeutic option for the treatment of irreversible end-stage heart failure in all age groups with adequate success rates. Survival of patients who underwent heart transplantation has improved incrementally in recent years, with 86% survival in the first year and over 50% survival at 10 years. Approximately 50% of patients live for more than 10 years after heart transplantation and 25% of patients live for more than 18 years. Improvement of the quality of life is an other benefit, while the patients were in NYHA class III-IV preoperatively, nearly all of them have an improved functional status with NYHA class I-II after transplantation. However, discrepancy between the number of candidates and number of available donors is still the major problem for the applicability of heart transplantation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey. ozzan70@gmail.com
authors.forename: Ozan
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Erbasan
authors.forename: Cemal
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kemaloğlu
authors.forename: Omer
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Bayezid
mesh_terms: D006085:Graft Survival; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000401:mortality / Q000601:surgery*; D016027:Heart Transplantation / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D011379:Prognosis; D011788:Quality of Life; D015996:Survival Rate; D013997:Time Factors