Is Dick Cheney just the first of a new wave of older patients who will be receiving heart transplants?
In The Doctor’s World column in Tuesday’s Science Times, Lawrence K. Altman, M.D., chronicled the numerous medical advances that have helped the former vice president, now 71, survive serious heart disease for decades, culminating in perhaps the most miraculous treatment of all: a new heart.
But in the near future, Mr. Cheney’s case is likely to be the exception, not the rule. Transplant centers don’t expect a flood of older patients anytime soon. Most 70-something adults with failing hearts aren’t good candidates for these demanding surgeries, experts say, and in any event, organs are just too scarce.
Each transplant center decides on its own which older patients to accept for transplant and under what circumstances, and policies vary across the country. Some centers, like the Cleveland Clinic and Johns Hopkins Medicine, will operate on patients in their early or even middle 70s. Other centers will not.
Just a decade ago, people 65 and older were routinely rejected for heart transplants at all but a few institutions. But in 2006, the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation issued new guidelines saying that heart failure patients should be considered for transplants up to age 70.
The voluntary guidelines reflected advances in transplantation and a growing older population in better health and with longer lifespans than in decades past. The society left open the possibility of transplanting hearts into patients over age 70, as long as recipients were otherwise in very good health.
Read more: http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/heart-transplants-for-older-patients/
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