Heart transplantation is the surgical procedure that is reserved for individuals with severe heart failure and by which a healthy heart is provided by a recently donated donor.
Heart failure means that serious pathological condition in which an individual's heart is irretrievably damaged and no longer "works" as it should; in other words, it is difficult to pump blood into the circulation and to supply the various organs and tissues of the body with oxygen.
Typical causes of heart failure are: coronary heart disease, cardiomyopathies, heart valve defects ( valvulopathies ) and congenital heart defects .
Below is a list of some characters, transplanted from the heart, who became famous after the operation, for various reasons:
- Kenneth Claus, who underwent surgery in Florida in 1988 at the Shands Hospital Gainesville, established himself between 2009 and 2010 as the nineteenth best professor in the United States. He still teaches for 3 semesters a year.
- According to the latest news, to date, the one who holds the longest-lived transplant record (that is, who has received the "new" heart the longest) is an Englishman named John Mccafferty . J. Mccafferty underwent surgery on 20 October 1982 and is still alive: so it has been almost 33 years since the operation.
Previously, the record belonged to Tony Huesman, who died of cancer after just over 30 years of transplantation. T. Huesman is also famous because he was one of the originators of the heart transplant procedure: Dr. Norman Shumway.
- Dwith Kroening was the first heart transplant to finish an Ironman race. This happened 12 years after the operation.
- Kelly Perkins was the first heart transplant to reach the heights of Mount Fuji, Kilimanjaro, Matterhorn and Mount Whitney. His exploits took place 12 years after the operation and served to show that after the implantation of a "new" heart, life continues.
