Hepatitis C-positive heart donors offer a strategy to safely expand the donor pool and allow more patients to undergo transplant.

Patients with a form of congenital heart disease — having only one ventricle (pumping chamber) — are now living longer lives due to the successful surgical and medical treatments they receive as children.

Tim Lowell of Hernando, Mississippi, received the first total artificial heart in the state of Tennessee when the cardiac surgery team at Vanderbilt Health placed the device in his chest on Sept. 26, 2018. The mechanical heart kept him alive for nearly three months until a matching human donor heart became available and he was transplanted on Dec. 16, 2018, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center set a new record for total transplants among its five organ specialties in 2018 with more than 500 transplants.

Medical teams at the Vanderbilt Transplant Center (VTC) are leading the way in utilization of hepatitis C-exposed donors for heart transplantation.

Charlotte Haffner, Vanderbilt’s first patient to undergo a heart transplant followed by a stem cell transplant to treat a plasma cell disorder called primary AL amyloidosis, now she dedicates her time to raising awareness about the rare disease.

The heart transplant team at Vanderbilt University Medical Center successfully transplanted two hearts using a novel preservation and transport technology allowing the heart to beat outside of the body for an extended amount of time.