Author Description

This volume collects 45 articles on heart transplantation written by Dr. William C. Roberts and colleagues between 1993 and 2022. It is part of a series of collected reprints on various topics published in 2023. From the Preface Heart transplantation (HT) became a predictably successful procedure in the early 1980s. Since that time, HT has brought new life to thousands of patients. Early in my career, the autopsy was the source of most of the cases for my publications. Subsequently, the autopsy rate in most hospitals worldwide has dropped dramatically and the frequency of HT has risen dramatically. In my laboratory, more studies by a considerable margin now come from native hearts removed at HT rather than at autopsy. With a few exceptions, HT is performed because of severe heart failure due to a variety of causes, most commonly ischemic cardiomyopathy and idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy. At Baylor University Medical Center, we have a program where the explanted native heart is shown to the recipient of the HT. We now have shown the native heart to approximately 190 HT recipients. Baylor University Medical Center has provided the cardiac pathology unit with a storage facility such that HT recipients can be shown their native heart many years after the HT procedure. During that session, I try to explain to patients the importance of caring for their new heart and to emphasize how lucky they are to have a second chance. The USA has a population of approximately 330 million, about 240 million of whom are >20 years of age. About 6 million have chronic heart failure, and about 3000 of the 6 million have a HT in the USA each year. Thus, the recipients of HT are the lucky ones. Few of the HT recipients pay for their own HT, an extremely expensive procedure paid for mainly by the non-HT community. Of course, HT has brought much new information on heart disease, which can provide hope to many of the non-HT recipients. -William C. Roberts, MD