Hi, my name is Ramdevkuda. I'm 31 year old.
Before we list anybody for a transplant,
they meet with all the members
of the multidisciplinary team,
social work, pharmacy, nutrition,
the surgeons and then they also
obtain a series of testing and
the goal is to determine whether
transplant is going to be beneficial
to that person in that moment.
There are plenty of.
Patients who do not get heart
transplantation because there's
insufficient number of suitable
hearts that are felt to be
appropriate for particular recipient.
And that's why it's important
to really do this.
It's a multidisciplinary approach
where we have a lot of people coming
together and discussion fairly
openly what do we really think is
the likelihood that the patient will
do well after the operation. I'm
not, I'm not, I'm excited.
I'm excited and I'm just like.
Little bit scared,
but it's fine, you know, He's
so sweet. He always says he just
wants to go back to work and
you know, get his life back.
So that's I would be so happy just
to see him kind of independent
and able to live out his dreams.
Alright, I'll have to say one.
They they just say like
oh we found the heart. And
I'm I'm like I'm
excited like Oh my God,
the patient comes into the operating
room while a different team is actually
at the site where the heart is being
retrieved from and once we know that
the the donor heart is actually good.
We kind of commit to doing the operation.
Essentially, the heart is
taken out immediately and then
placed on a transmetics device,
and that particular device allows for
the heart to be restarted on the device.
It allows for reassessment of
the function of the heart after
it has incurred the process of
essentially stopping and dying.
And you're actually able to transport the
heart much further distances than you
would if you were using cold storage.
There is a large discrepancy
in the need for hearts for
transplantation and the actual supply,
and this is trying to essentially
bridge that particular gap. There's
a lot of coordination worked out,
and that needs to be done.
A transplant can take
anyway from three to four
hours up to 8 to 12 hours.
In the immediate after period,
patients are recovering major surgery,
they're in the ICU,
they're usually up and moving within a
few days as long as everything goes well
and we start education pretty quickly.
So we try to give patients a good idea
of what life after transplant is like.
As far as the nuances with medications,
dietary changes,
little things that we need,
they need to think about after transplant
medications, immunosuppressants are actually
what makes transplantation possible.
These are medications that actually
lower your immune system at the
time of transplant because of how
the body reacts to foreign objects,
like your heart, for instance.
Your immune system is actually trying
to do its job by protecting you.
And in the land of transplant,
that's what we call rejection.
We lower your immune system
intentionally so that your immune
system and the heart can get along well.
That being said,
because we lower the immune system,
it does also put patients at
risk for infections,
especially during the first
year after transplantation
around is most definitely one
of our most exemplary patients.
I hope that he leaves the hospital,
goes home and eventually comes back
to tell us all the nice things that
he's doing because now he can.
I'm just walking,
you know the hospital like.
Outside door I just like feel like,
Oh my God, this is a new
world like totally different.
They give me like a new life,
you know Second life. So my mom,
dad give me like fast life and then
now you know my doctor nurses team,
everybody whole like transplant team,
they treat me like as a family member.
You get to know patients, you know,
when they're really sick,
they're struggling and to see
patients succeed and do so
well and get their lives back,
that's what that's what we want to do.
So we develop a lifelong
relationship after transplant,
even, you know, 10/15/20 years out,
we see you twice a year maybe to say
hi, but we're always there.
We commit to the patient when we
list them for transplantation.
We commit to them by
being their support team,
by giving them and helping them with
the resources that they need to be
successful in their post transplant course.
But it's also a commitment
from the patient to us as well.
They're going to take responsibility
of their medications,
make sure that they're
treating themselves right,
coming to appointment so that we can
make sure they're progressing well.
It's really a great
team of heart failure,
cardiologists, transplant surgeons.
All the nurses that we work so closely
with, the profusion coordinators,
the social workers and we're very proud
of all the patients that we've served,
how well they've done and how many life
we've really changed and kind of saved