Heart and Lung Transplant Causes

The most common indication for heart transplantation is severe end-stage heart failure, which means the heart cannot pump blood well enough to reach all tissues in the body. People who receive heart transplants get them only when their failing hearts do not respond to medicines or other surgical treatments. Several conditions lead to heart failure, including the following:

• Ischemia, or lack of oxygenated blood to the heart (coronary heart disease), leading to heart attack and permanently damaged heart muscle
  
  
• Heart valve disease, such as with damage from rheumatic fever
  
  
• Infections of heart tissue, especially heart valves
  
  
• Untreated, uncontrolled high blood pressure
  
  
• Heart muscle disease, secondary to multiple causes
  
  
• Congenital heart defects (certain heart defects that an individual is born with)
  
  
• Certain drugs

The most common reason people get lung transplants is for chronic obstructive lung diseases such as emphysema. Other people are born with conditions that cause their lungs to fail, such as the following:

• Cystic fibrosis
  
  
• Eisenmenger syndrome, which is due to unoperated congenital heart defects 
  
  
• Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis
  
  
• Primary pulmonary hypertension - High pressure in the arteries (of unknown cause) that supply blood to the lungs
  
  
• Alpha1 antitrypsin deficiency