Transplant

January 6, 2025

Heart transplant program reaches new landmark

The recipient of the 2,000th transplant was Wes Carter, 37, a real estate agent from Pensacola, Florida, who first noticed an irregular heart rhythm in his mid-20s.

Vanderbilt’s 2,000th heart transplant patient, Wes Carter, with his family: wife, Ashley, daughter, Presley (4) and son, Gentry (7). Vanderbilt’s 2,000th heart transplant patient, Wes Carter, with his family: wife, Ashley, daughter, Presley (4) and son, Gentry (7).

The Vanderbilt Transplant Center’s heart transplant program recently celebrated a milestone — its 2,000th heart transplant.

The recipient of the 2,000th transplant was Wes Carter, 37, a real estate agent from Pensacola, Florida, who first noticed an irregular heart rhythm in his mid-20s. “It kind of snowballed from there,” Carter said.

Fourteen years ago, Carter had an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) implanted at his local hospital to shock his heart to regular rhythm if an irregular rhythm developed. He underwent five ablation procedures, during which a tiny amount of heart tissue is deliberately destroyed in an effort to permanently return the heart to regular rhythm. After each one, his heart would be OK for a while, then the arrythmia would return.

“We were just playing Whac-A-Mole,” he said. “My doctor finally threw his hands up and said, “We’ve done all that we can do here. I’m going to refer you to Vanderbilt.’”

Carter was flown to Vanderbilt, where he received his sixth ablation and, in anticipation of ongoing life-threatening arrhythmias, underwent transplant evaluation and was placed on the transplant waitlist. Two weeks later, he received a new heart.   

Carter credits his whole Vanderbilt team, from doctors and nurses to physical therapists at the Dayani Center, for helping him to survive and recover. “The group of individuals there are absolutely remarkable,” he said. “My endurance is building up, and I feel pretty energetic. I’ll go as much as my body will let me, and that’s more and more each week.”

Vanderbilt’s first adult heart transplant in 1985 was followed by its first pediatric heart transplant in 1987 and the Southeast’s first heart/lung transplant that same year. The program has grown dramatically in just the last 10 years. In 2017 VUMC celebrated 1,000 heart transplants and has now doubled that number seven years later. Today, the adult program ranks as the busiest in the world, having performed over 160 transplants in calendar year 2024. Patients come to Vanderbilt seeking transplant from across the Southeast and from places as far away as Michigan, Texas, California and New York. 

The program’s growth is due to the tireless efforts of a talented multidisciplinary team and to the deployment of innovative technologies that have expanded the donor pool and allowed access to more organs. Over the last four years, Vanderbilt’s heart transplant program has been a leader in utilizing hearts from DCD (donor after cardiac death) donors, hearts that were previously discarded for fear that they wouldn’t work well. Technologies used at the time of organ recovery and transplant, some of which have been pioneered by Vanderbilt, have allowed those hearts to be transplanted, yielding excellent outcomes. About half of Vanderbilt’s heart transplants in 2023 came from DCD donors.

The transplant team includes cardiologists and cardiac surgeons, intensivists, nurses, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, social workers, financial coordinators, nutritionists, organ procurement coordinators, preservationists, operating room staff, cardiac anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists, among others. The team is led on the adult side by Ashish Shah, MD, professor and chair of Cardiac Surgery and holder of the Alfred Blalock Directorship of Cardiac Surgery, and Kelly Schlendorf, MD, MHS, associate professor of Medicine,  section head of Heart Failure and Transplantation and medical director of the Adult Heart Transplant Program;  and on the pediatric side by Carlos Mery, MD, MPH, professor and chief of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt; and David Bearl, MD, MBA, associate professor of Pediatrics and medical director of the Pediatric Heart Transplant Program at Monroe Carell.

“Two thousand heart transplants is a special milestone,” Schlendorf said. “It’s not about the number but about what that number represents: teamwork, innovation, and the humbling but incredibly rewarding opportunity to shepherd so many patients on their life-changing journeys.”