Heart Transplant Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Heart Transplant, including details on risks, prognosis, procedure, surgery, organ donation.

Cardiac transplantation in patients with anti-phospholipid antibodies.

Schofield RS, Aranda JM, Shoemaker SB, Pauly DF, Hill JA, Klodell CT

Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Gainesville, Florida, USA. schofrs@medicine.ufl.edu

Patients with severe heart failure are known to have an increased incidence of thromboembolic events and frequently have a visible thrombus in the left ventricle. Thromboemboli in heart failure patients are usually attributed to the underlying heart failure, and alternative etiologies for thrombus formation are rarely sought. However, anti-phospholipid antibodies and other inherited or acquired clotting abnormalities may contribute to hypercoagulability in heart failure patients and can lead to a persistent high risk for clotting, even after heart transplantation has corrected the underlying heart failure. We report outcomes with heart transplantation in 3 young patients with anti-phospholipid antibodies and a history of pre-heart transplantation thromboembolic events, and demonstrate the importance of post-heart transplantation anti-coagulation in these patients.

Published 9 March 2007 in J Heart Lung Transplant, 26(3): 299-301.
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