Original article: cardiovascularHeart transplantation: echocardiographic assessment of morphology and function after more than 10 years of follow-up
Section snippets
Material and methods
Between 1983 and 1989, 301 patients underwent heart transplantation at Hannover Medical School. With a 10-year survival rate of 52%, 156 patients were still alive after 10 years. Following our study protocol, we investigated consecutively all patients who visited our outpatient department for follow-up. However, because of loss of follow-up due to one of the following reasons, we finally investigated 65 consecutive patients (55 male and 10 female): (1) Follow-up managed in another transplant
Clinical status
Exercise tolerance in long-term survivors was excellent with 22 patients in NYHA functional class I, 20 patients in class II, 16 patients in class III, and 7 patients in class IV. The mean number of antihypertensive drugs was 2.8 ± 0.8. Concerning renal function, the mean creatinine level of 59 patients was 142.3 ± 71.7 μmol/l; a total of 6 patients were on hemodialysis.
Morphology
Left ventricular dimensions were predominantly within the normal range. The mean left ventricular enddiastolic diameter was
Comment
During the last decade, heart transplantation has been established as an adequate treatment for patients with end-stage heart failure. With the increasing success of heart transplant programs, the number of long-term survivors is growing continuously [5]. To date, the oldest heart transplant recipient is still alive, 26 years after HTX. Focused on our unicentric experience at Hannover Medical School, a survival half-life time of 10.7 years resulted.
However, despite these encouraging results,
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