A team led by the head of the Cardiovascular Surgery Clinic within the Emergency Institute for Cardiovascular Diseases and Transplant (IUBCvT) Targu Mures, Horatiu Suciu, performed on Tuesday the first heart transplant of this year in Romania, on a 54-year-old patient, from Caras-Severin county, who was in an advanced stage of heart failure, according to Agerpres.

„This morning, we performed the first heart transplant of this year at the Cardiovascular Diseases and Transplant Institute Targu Mures. The patient, a 54-year-old man from Caras-Severin county. A patient who was in an advanced stage of heart failure, who was on the waiting list for approximately 2 years, with dilated cardiomyopathy, an irreversible condition that affects the heart muscle and creates, of course, an extremely poor quality of life and, certainly, a high risk of death. Fortunately, there was an available a heart that was harvested from the Bucharest Emergency University Hospital by a team that traveled from our clinic, led by doctor Harpa Marius. The cord came by air with a SMURD helicopter, landed around 14:30hrs and the intervention lasted about 4 hours and ended successfully. For the moment, we are satisfied with the development of the patient, we hope that this development further continues,” doctor Horatiu Suciu told the press.

Doctor Suciu said that being the fist transplant this year, the team from Targu Mures further wishes to continue at a pace that meets a great need, as there are numerous patients on the waiting lists, both at the Targu Mures center and at the center in Bucharest.

„Certainly, all the transplant interventions are special interventions, difficult, which entail a very good coordination. From this organizational point of view many challenges arise. From a technical point of view there is an intervention which enters the area of cardiovascular surgery, an intervention that, fortunately, represents a routine in our institute. As I have mentioned, it took 4 hours and things are on the right track. Last year we performed 3 heart transplants, unfortunately only 3 and, of course, we planned many more. We aim around 10-12 transplants, if we start from January, so that the number increases. But here, we depend a lot on the donors. We are ready to perform the transplant any time. The number of donors was quite small, but this year, we started quite early and we have to be optimistic,” Suciu stated.

The head of the Intensive Care Medicine (ICU) Section within the IUBCv Targu Mures, doctor Sorin Pascanu mentioned that the first heart transplant performed this year unfolded very well, even if it started a bit late, because of the weather conditions.

Doctor Sorin Pascanu said that this idea of performing these surgeries is to offer patients a normal life.

Agerpres