This procedure is done mainly in case of heart failure or severe coronary artery disease that has caused fatal necrosis to the cardiac tissue.
This procedure involves taking out the patients diseased heart and replacing it with a healthy donor heart.
The main arteries of the heart are connected to the heart-lung machine, and the patients breathing is controlled with a ventilator machine.
There are 2 approaches to the heart transplant:
Cardiectomy: the patients heart is removed completely
Orthotopic: the heart of the patient is removed except for the posterior of the atria. The donors heart is sewn so that the front its atria are sutured to the remaining back of the patients atria. This helps support the donor heart
Then the donors pulmonary artery and aorta are sutured into place.
The rest of the blood vessels connected to the heart lung machine are sewn back to the heart.