Transplant

January 31, 2025

How many surgical instruments are used to set the 2024 heart transplant world record?

A standard heart transplant requires surgical instruments spread across multiple sterile tables — from tiny vascular clamps to hefty retractors to keep the surgical field open.

Various instruments sit out for use during a heart transplant surgery on Jan. 15. (photo by Erin O. Smith)
Brandon Petree, MD, takes cultures from a patient’s heart during the transplant. (photo by Erin O. Smith)
Kascey Malone, CST, Brandon Petree, MD, Aaron Williams, MD, Sean Bunch, RN, and Yatrik Patel, MD, work on the transplant patient. (photo by Erin O. Smith)
A standard heart transplant requires surgical many types of instruments. (photo by Erin O. Smith)

The Vanderbilt Transplant Center set a world record in 2024 by performing 174 adult and pediatric heart transplants — an average of one transplant every two days.

So who cleans all the instruments that surgical teams need for each transplant? The Sterile Processing Department, that’s who.

Each heart transplant case requires at least one set of 207 instruments, meaning the 2024 record required the SPD staff to clean, sterilize, test, repackage and transport, at minimum, 36,018 instruments.

A standard heart transplant requires surgical instruments spread across multiple sterile tables — from tiny vascular clamps no bigger than a fingertip to hefty retractors to keep the surgical field open.

The surgical team also needs specialized chest saws, forceps and clamps, suture needles, and of course duplicates, just in case.

“The relationship between surgeons and their instruments spans centuries. It is how we perform our duties to cure patients and eliminate suffering, and so the task of curating instruments and making them ready to help these vulnerable patients, particularly those who are having life-threatening or life-altering operations takes on even greater importance when we are a very large organization,” said Ashish Shah, MD, professor and chair of Cardiac Surgery.

“The SPD team is charged with an almost sacred duty: assuring each patient the instruments used to care for them will be clean, sharp and perfect so as to allow our heart surgeons to do their work at the highest level,” added Shah, who holds the Alfred Blalock Directorship in Cardiac Surgery.