Heart Transplant Program

I just love being able to see my patients come back in after their transplant and be able to tell me all the things that they're able to do now that they weren't able to do before. There are many reasons that a patient might need a transplant. Some families have known that their baby has a heart defect, even during the pregnancy. And there's certain types of heart defects that overall, there's a high likelihood throughout the baby's life that they'll need a transplant. We deal with infants and children, even up through young adults. Some of them might need transplant as their primary therapy, meaning right after they're born. Others, we might be able to do some palative surgeries or some corrective surgeries. We at Mayo have a lot of resources that aren't commonly available at other hospitals, so we're a children's hospital within a large adult hospitals. Because we have a strong adult transplant program, we've been able to utilize some of the new technology like OCS, which is basically a system that helps support the donor heart. Once the heart has been identified, this machine supports it during the transport to get it back to where the recipient patient is. For a patient, that means that they're looking at a broader spectrum of donors across the US. In addition, we've had changes to our immunosuppressive medications and regimens that we use after transplant to try and improve outcome with lower rates of rejection and side effects. Many of the children that have congenital heart disease or heart failure have problems with other organ systems. We have such a great multidisciplinary team here, we can facilitate getting them into all of the other providers that they may need to see. One of the hallmarks of Mayo as a whole is the ability to work with in specialties. And that's needed, most of all, for transplant because of the immunology, infectious disease. All these specialties need to be able to work closely together. We have all the resources to help get a family and a patient through. I think Mayo really is a place of hope. One of my favorite parts of my job is getting to call families when we get that donor offer, when we've accepted a heart for one of these kids who's waiting a long time. The hope for all of these kids is that we get them to a better quality of life and back to being a regular kid.