Experimental and Clinical Cardiac Transplantation

Abstract

Initial clinical trials appear to justify heart transplantation in totally incapacitated persons facing imminent death. At Stanford University hundreds of animal transplants have been done, with an early survival rate of 85 percent. This experience has provided a successful surgical method and information about the denervated heart and about the effectiveness of various forms of immunosuppressive therapy. Both experimentally and clinically, the earliest signs of rejection are electrocardiographic.