Heart Transplant

Vanderbilt University Medical Center performs more heart transplants than any other program in the world. Our vast experience means expert care for you.

Results for Vanderbilt heart transplant patients regularly exceed national standards.

We offer mechanical support options while you wait for a heart transplant—or sometimes instead of a transplant. For example, a ventricular assist device (VAD) allows you to live normally at home. As one of the first hospitals in the Southeast to offer VADs, we’ve implanted more than 500, including implanting the first total artificial heart in 2018. We were also among the first to provide extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) for patients with severe conditions.

Our heart transplant teams helped pioneer the transplant of hearts from donors with hepatitis C. This greatly increases the number of healthy donor hearts available for waiting recipients. Our teams also were among the first to use ex vivo perfusion, keeping a heart beating while in transit from donor to recipient. This helps ensure the donor heart you receive is the healthiest it can be.

We are one of only five transplant programs designated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to provide heart transplants to our nation’s veterans.

Our transplant pharmacists offer the highest level of care and expertise for transplant patients. Each transplant pharmacist works directly with doctors and staff to monitor patients' care plans.

Now that more people with congenital heart disease are living well into adulthood, Vanderbilt provides them with special care through our Advanced Congenital Cardiac Therapies group. This team is a unique collaboration of adult congenital heart disease, heart failure, heart surgery and heart transplant specialists. They understand the complexity of heart transplants for people with congenital heart disease and can guide you through the process.

Vanderbilt is consistently ranked among the nation’s best by leading authorities on health care quality. People from throughout the Southeast and across the country rely on us for the best and most innovative care possible.