Jamael Hoosain

That's a great question. Simplest answer is "everyone is different." There is some truth to that blanket statement. In order to provide clarity in this answer, let me give you two time stamps: 1) how long will you be in the hospital for after transplant? And 2) how long will it take for me to feel good again and "recover from transplant"?

It depends on a few factors: how sick/many co-morbidities (aka other medical problems) you have prior to transplant, did you have any other open chest surgeries, do you have a mechanical heart pump (or LVAD), did you experience a complications from the operations, and how strong your muscles and conditioning were before the transplant, or "how frail are you." These all can affect the recovery time. A typical course includes having a temporary breathing tube (intubation) and give them sedation for the surgery. If the person was physically conditioned and have strong lungs, we wake them up and try to have them breath on their own and remove the breathing tube within 24-72 hours if possible. There is also a period of time which the heart has to "wake up and stretch" because the donor heart was on ice and had no blood flow for the minutes preceding the transplant. The heart for the first few days is stiff and sometimes a little dysfunctional, which very often have people on medications such as epinephrine and milrinone/dobutamine to help the heart contract harder until the stiffness/weakness wears off. This is normal and expected for the first few days. When people go to major chest surgery, they have chest tubes to drain the extra fluid in the chest that is associated with the healing process, which also is expected and stay in for a few days. ~7-14 days, we then get a heart biopsy to make sure the body has start to reject the heart. If there is no signs of rejection, the tubes and wires have all done their job and are removed, and you are on all of the right medications, we then let people go home. This total process, if everything goes smoothly can be anywhere from 7-14 days on average.

After surgery, if you are still a little weak and wobbly on your feet (remember, you just had a major surgery), it may be advised to spend time in a rehab to build up your strength. After a few weeks to months of healing, people generally feel better than they did before transplant. Some people in a short time frame, some longer.
Hope this helps!

Open heart surgery is the general term and coronary artery bypass grafting (or CABG) is a type of open heart surgery.

-Open heart surgery is like "opening the hood" of your car to do a repair.
-CABG is a type of repair you can do, after you "open the hood."
-Valve repair/replacement is another type of repair you can do after you "open the hood" or do an open heart surgery.

Other examples are doing surgeries on the aorta, fixing a hole in the heart, or even putting in a mechanical heart pump or a heart transplant.

A transesophageal echocardiogram is an echocardiogram which we need to do from inside the mouth/down the swallowing pipe or esophagus. We do this when we are having trouble seeing something on the transthoracic echocardiogram (the one takes place outside of your body). Examples of times would be if we want to look a heart valve with more definition or magnification (like for valve problems or infections) or have to look in the chambers of the heart, especially in the back of the heart to look for blood clots like if you had a stroke or conditions that put you at risk for a blood clot like an arrhythmia called atrial fibrillation. We also do it in conjunction to catheter based procedures like ablations, or transcutaneous valve repair to help guide the catheters in the right place.

Heart transplantation is an established therapy for end-stage heart failure (HF) for both men and women with a 1-year survival of 91% and a median survival of 12 to 13 years.

We usually watch people overnight and then send them home. It takes 2-4 weeks for the wound to heal nicely.

Nope! The blocked artery may be robbing flow to you heart and can cause pain. Unblocking with a stent can help return blood flow to the area and relieve pain. Unfortunately, if you have pain that is NOT related to a blocked artery, the stent may not alleviate that pain. NOT all blocked arteries cause paint either. However, generally speaking, stenting an artery is not a painful procedure (if anything you may feel discomfort at the site of which the catheters enter the skin/blood vessel). Sometimes, the whole procedure goes so smoothly and free of discomfort, that patients sometimes forget they even had the procedure.

As long as the heart did not take a significant amount of ischemic injury (aka lake of blood flow), while it is on ice being transported to the recipient, the heart "wakes up" and generally starts beating like normal almost immediately, however It is very common for the heart to be a little "sluggish" in the first few days, and requires inotropes (aka adrenaline) drips to help the heart wake up. Its similar to when you sit too long, your leg falls asleep, you get up and after you walk around for a little bit and the leg returns to normal. Sometime when the heart sits on ice too long, it needs a minute to wake up.

Everyone recipient recovers differently but generally the recipient is in the ICU for a days then another few days on the step-down unit. Most people stay int he hospital until their first biopsy.