Heart Transplant Survival Rate Changes

This shows the survival rate of a heart transplant patient, and
how the survival rate has increased with Scientists and Doctors 
improvement in technology.  The graph shows how much the survival
rate has increased in the past 20 years.  This is very important
due to the fact that it improves the lives of those who need Heart
Transplants.

Types of Heart Surgeries

Heart surgery has become a great controversy in today’s medical world. Heart surgery is done to correct problems with the heart. Many heart surgeries are performed every year to help correct various different problems relating to the heart. The controversy over heart surgery is not just the general subject of the surgery, but the heart transplant itself. There is controversy over who gets picked for a heart transplant and how they are chosen from the heart transplant list. Nobody has priority over anyone else on the heart transplant list, it is simply a list that is made up just like if you were to wait in line for a roller coaster.

Heart surgery is used for both adults and children. The most common type of heart surgery for adults is a coronary artery bypass grafting, or CABG. Coronary artery bypass grafting aim to restore complete blood flow to the heart. During coronary artery bypass grafting, a good artery or vein from the body is either connected, or grafted, to a blocked coronary artery. The connected vein or artery goes around the blocked part of the coronary artery, creating a new path for oxygen-rich blood to flow to the heart.

Another type of Heart Surgery is Transmyocardial Laser Revascularization, or TMR, and is used to treat angina. Angina is a condition which usually consists of severe chest pain, often spreading to the shoulders, arms, and neck, and is caused by low blood supply to the heart. TMR is basically a last resort treatment. For example, if you have already had one coronary artery bypass grafting procedure and can not have another one, TMR might be the only option.

For some people, TMR is combined with CABR. If TMR is done without any other procedure, then the procedure may be done through a small incision in the chest. While the procedure is being done, a surgeon uses lasers to make small channels through the heart and into the heart’s lower left chamber.

In order for the heart to work well, blood must flow only one way. If a valve is healthy, it flows the process that any heart valve does. The valve opens and closes in a precise way as the heart pumps blood. Each valve has a set of flaps called leaflets. The leaflets allow blood to go from one heart chamber into either the arteries or into another chamber of the heart. Then the leaflets close to stop blood from flowing backwards. Heart valve repair is used to fix the leaflets that do not open as wide as they should. This cap happen if they become stiff or link together. As a result, not enough blood flows through the valve.

Heart valve repair is also used to fix leaflets that don’t close tightly. This can cause blood to leak back into the heart chambers, instead of moving forward into the arteries as it was designed to do. To correct these problems, surgeons either repair or replace the valve with a man-made or biological valve.

To repair a mitral or pulmonary valve that is too small, a heart surgeon will insert a catheter through a large blood vessel and guide it to the heart. The cardiologist will put the end of the catheter inside the narrow valve, then they will proceed to inflate and deflate like a small balloon type structure at the tip of the catheter. This expands the valve which allows more blood flow through the valve. This technique is less invasive than open-heart surgery.

Catheters have also been tested in new ways to perform different surgeries on different valves. For example, catheters may be used to place clips on the mitral valve leaflets to hold them in place. Surgeons, in some cases may make a small incision in the left ventricle and chest. They will feed the catheter into the heart trhough the small opening.

The heart valve repair is performed for one or multiple of the following reasons. A patient has mitral regurgitation, which is a mitral valve that does not want to close and allows blood to leak back into the left chamber of the heart. A patient has mitral stenosis, which is a mitral valve that does not open fully and restricts blood flow. A patient has developed an infection in a heart valve, or a patient has mitral valve prolapse that is not controlled with medicine. Other minor reasons for surgery are: changes in your mitral valve such as chest pain, shortness of breath or fainting spells, tests that show the changes in your mitral valve are beginning to harm your heart function, or damage to your heart valve from infection.

Another type of heart surgery is an arrhythmia treatment. An arrhythmia is a condition by which the heart rate or rhythm has a problem staying consistent. Though many arrhythmia do no harm to the body, some can be life threatening. If the heart’s rate is not beating at a normal pace, the heart may not be able to send enough blood to the body. This loss of blood flow can damage the body’s vital organs such as the brain, the heart, and the lungs.

Another type of heart surgery is an aneurysm repair. Aneurysms usually grow and burst inside of the body, which causes dangerous, often fatal bleeding inside the body. Aneurysms can split the layers of the artery wall. The split causes the layers to bleed along the artery wall.

Another type of heart surgery is a heart transplant surgery. This surgery is performed when a person’s heart is diseased or failing and it is replaced with a deceased donor’s healthy heart. This procedure is usually performed on those who are at the end-stage of heart failure.

Heart transplant patients are put on a waiting list to receive a donor’s heart receive ongoing treatment for heart failure. The treatment is to keep their heart as healthy as possible until they are able to get a donor’s heart. Ventricular assist devices or total artificial hearts are used to treat these patients who are waiting.

Another type of heart surgery is open-heart surgery. This type of surgery is actually any kind of surgery in which a surgeon makes a large incision in the chest to operate on the heart. The word Open refers to the chest, not the heart, although some surgeries require the surgeon to open the actual heart.

Once the chest is open and the rib cage is out of the way, the patient is connected to a heart-lung bypass machine. The machine takes on the responsibility of the heart’s pumping action and moves blood away from the heart. This gives the surgeon a clear work environment in the heart so that it isn’t beating and there isn’t a constant flow of blood flowing through it. Open heart surgery is used to perform all of the surgeries that have been mentioned.

The final heart surgery that will be mentioned is minimally invasive heart surgery. For this type of surgery, surgeons make small cuts in the side of the chest in between the ribcage. This type of surgery may or may not use a heart-lung bypass machine.

Heart surgery has many benefits which help our bodies. Many of these heart surgeries can save patients a lot of pain, or even death. Some of the benefits of these heart surgeries are: reduced injury to heart, fewer heart rhythm problems, less need for blood transfusions, lowers death rate and fewer problems with memory loss and thinking skills. Although the procedures are risky, patients are handled by well-trained professionals who have dedicated their lives to saving the lives of others.

Patients looking to qualify for heart surgery have to go through many tests which require patience, and complete obedience to do whatever the doctor asks. Children who have a heart disease must be tested in some cases in a different way than adults for the right surgery. If you are a candidate for a heart transplant, you can expect to be examined in many different ways. You are examined by a social worker to see if your condition is bad enough to be placed on the heart transplant list.

These tests are designed to show the doctors what they need to know to perform on the patient or to tell them if they even really need to perform on the patient.(nhlbi.nih.gov) An EKG, or electrocardiogram, is a painless, noninvasive test that records the heart’s electrical activity. It is noninvasive by the fact that there is no surgery required and no instruments are inserted into the patients body.

The EKG shows how fast the heart is beating and its rhythm. An EKG also reads the strength and timing of electrical signals as they pass through the heart. An EKG can also show signs of heart damage due to coronary heart disease and signs of a previous or current heart attack.

The stress test is performed by making you exercise to make your heart work hard and beat fast. If you can’t exercise, you may be given medicine to raise your heart rate. As part of the test, your blood pressure is checked and an EKG is done. Other heart tests also might be done.

Coronary angiography is a test that uses special dye and x rays to show the insides of your arteries. To get the dye into your arteries, the doctor will use a procedure called cardiac catheterization. The doctor uses the catheter and threads it into your coronary arteries and then the dye is released into your bloodstream.

Special x rays are taken while the dye is flowing through the coronary arteries. These x rays are called angiograms. The dye lets the doctor study blood flow through the heart and blood vessels. This also helps your doctor find blockages that can cause a heart attack.

A cardiac computed tomography is an easy pain free scan that uses an x ray to take clear, detailed pictures of the heart. On occasion an iodine-based dye is put into one of your veins to highlight your arteries on the x ray pictures. This type of CT scan is called a coronary CT angiography, or CTA. These tests are taken to determine whether or not you have an aneurysm or to see the heart’s function and valves.

Heart surgery requires many tests to inform the doctor on what you need done to fix, or make your heart okay. The heart transplant is one of the most controversial topics in the medical field today. The reason for this controversy is because the priority of the patient is irrelevant. The patients are put on a list in which they have to wait in line for heart surgery. The only priority patients have are the ones who are higher up on the list.

The reason for the controversy is also because of the people who were put on the list too late and didn’t have a chance to receive a heart transplant before their heart failed, and they passed away. The heart transplant list is mostly looked down upon by people because of the fact that doctors have to follow the rules and so do the patients. The doctors can not give other patients priority over those who are ahead on the waiting list.

Although there is great controversy over who receives a heart transplant first, there should also be some understanding for it. Although it is much more serious than waiting in line at the bakery, it also shares the same basic fundamental as waiting in line at the bakery. Another controversy that has been brought up recently are doctors refusing to work on patients due to the fact that the patient didn’t obey the doctor’s commands. The patient is required to take many tests as mentioned and if they fail to take those tests and cooperate, they have a chance to not even be put on the heart transplant list.

The chance to get on the heart transplant list is determined by the patient’s cooperation. Although the patient who is on the list may not be able to get a heart transplant before he passes away, he still followed the rules of the doctors and was able to have a chance at receiving a heart transplant. When dealing with heart surgery you have to take into consideration that if there is anything with your heart, then you are at risk of dying. Even if it seems minor you should still have a doctor evaluate you to see if it is a serious problem, or if it is just minor chest pain due to stress.

There are two sides of heart surgery. There is the good side, and there is the bad side, as there is with anything. Heart surgery has many pros but it also has a substantial amount of cons. There are multiple things that heart surgery can fix, but also anytime you go into surgery you have many risks that you need to take into consideration.

The good side of heart surgery consists of all of the things that heart surgery can cure or how it can make the patient feel better. Heart surgery has many risky procedures, but the results are most of the time worth the risk. Some of the benefits of heart surgery are the things it can fix in a patients heart. The first of the benefits would be relieves chest pain. More benefits of heart surgery would be that it can prevent infection in the body, it can give the patient another chance to live his or her life.

Heart surgery has many benefits, but it also has just as many risks, if not more. Although heart surgery may cure problems, it can also be very dangerous. Some of the risks of heart surgery include: uncontrollable bleeding of the heart, infections due to the heart being exposed, a stroke, kidney failure, lung complications, heart attack, and finally death.

With the right tools and the right knowledge, surgeons perform many heart surgeries on patients, but just because they are well-trained professionals does not mean that they can fix the problems occurring in your heart. Heart surgeons work their hardest to make your heart work the way it was made to work, but they can’t guarantee that they can fix the problems.

Heart surgery has become a great controversy in today’s medical world. Heart surgery is done to fix problems with the heart. Although it is not completely reliable in that it may not be able to fix the problems, well-trained professionals work their hardest to make sure that the patient is well taken care of and worked on in the proper way. The controversy of the heart transplant list is that people are put on it in the order they came in. The patient who is highest on the list receives the heart transplant, regardless if their condition is better than the patient’s who is below them on the list. What should be resolved about the controversy is that people should know as they are going through the process of getting on the list that they have to wait in line just like anybody else. Nobody has priority over anyone else when it comes to a heart transplant.

Time Dilation

You’ve probably thought about the concept of time before, how it works, what it is, and how it is always constant. Time is very complex, and hard to grasp your mind around, but think of time as we know slowing down or even stopping. This is what happens in space. Time, as you drift further away from earth, essentially stops.

In our world there are not very many perfect constant variables, but one thing we can always rely on is time. Time is thought of as a direction seeing that just as we move around physically, we can move around in time. The difference between time and physical movement is that you can take a few steps in one direction and then go back to where you started, with time we are constantly moving forward but we have no possible way to go back. This is called the arrow of time which makes sense because once you shoot an arrow forward there is no returning to the original point from which it came, it can only go further.

Even though we can’t physically travel back in time, it is still a pretty confusing concept. We look at space as a distance. If time is a direction we are able to measure distance in time, but instead we measure time with clocks. We are very fortunate that we have figured out a way of measuring time, but the secret to this measurement is light.

Light is a strange thing seeing as it is very shy. If you’re following a beam of light and you try to go faster to catch it, the light will speed up at the exact same time at the exact same speed. No matter how hard you try to catch it, it will always stay ahead of you, which means that light will always travel at the same speed that you are traveling at. This is why we say that the speed of light is a constant variable, it is always ahead of you at the same speed. Because light is always traveling at this same speed, you will always know its speed which is three trillion meters per second, so you can use this speed to figure out how to measure time.

Think of time actually, in our eyes, slowing down essentially to a stop. This process is called spacetime. Spacetime is any model such as the earth that combines the variables space and time into a single continuum. Many experiments have been conducted on this theory, and proven true. Astronauts have taken atomic clocks onto a space shuttle and the clocks have actually slowed down because they were bound to the earths inertial clocks.

     If you were sent into space without having any restrictions, such as suffocating or dying at all, the people watching you would notice that you would start slowing down until you came to a complete stop. In your eyes you would see the earth rapidly spinning, this is called time dilation. The reason this happens is because time on earth is constant, in space time is a variable. Time in space stays the same for you, but those observing you drifting off into space would notice that you would begin to slow down the further you got away from earth.

     Time is a constant on earth but it is a variable in space. Time is very complex, and hard to grasp your mind around. Scientists are doing more studies to try to get a better understanding of the concept of time and space, and with a lot of research we are starting to grasp an idea of how it works.