CARDIAC TRANSPLANTATION - PATIENT SELECTI ON AND LONG-TERM FOLLOW-UP

Over the past 10 years, cardiac transplantation has evolved as an esta blished therapy for severe congestive heart failure refractory to cons ervative treatment. However, only selected patients can benefit from t his form of therapy. In this selected group of patients, actuarial sur vival rate has reached 68% after 5 years and 56% after 10 years. There fore, problems of long-term follow-up management of these patients hav e to be focused on. The primarily surgical procedure of cardiac transp lantation turns into an interdisciplinary task for internists, mainly cardiologists, nephrologists and immunologists. In the present review, patient selection criteria and problems in the long-term follow-up ma nagement of patients after cardiac transplantation are discussed from a cardiological point of view.