What Are the Benefits of Artificial Heart Transplants?

An artificial heart is a medical device designed to replace the two lower chambers of a patient’s heart. Artificial heart transplant offers many benefits for patients suffering from heart failure, including those patients who are not candidates to eventually receive a donor heart.

Survival to Transplantation

• One of the primary benefits of an artificial heart transplant is that it can prolong a heart-failure patient’s survival time, increasing the chances that the patient will live long enough to receive a donor heart.

Improved Quality of Life

• As it can take a long time to receive a donor heart from the national waiting list, an artificial heart transplant can improve a patient’s quality of life while on the waiting list.

Better Transplant Candidate

• An additional benefit of an artificial heart transplant is that it makes the patient a better candidate for an ordinary heart transplant, since an artificial heart helps the patient’s other organs recover from the damage caused by heart failure.

Increased Transplantation Survival

• Probably since an artificial heart transplant makes patients better transplant candidates, artificial hearts also boost a patient’s odds of surviving after a donor heart transplant.

Alternative to Heart Transplant

• An artificial heart can also benefit advanced heart-failure patients who are not candidates to receive a donor heart. Undergoing an artificial heart transplant can prolong the lives of such patients.