Combined Heart and Other Organ Transplant

The development of novel immunosuppressives, as mentioned in Chap. 10, has been at the forefront of significant advances and improvements in the care of transplant patients. Inevitably, accompanying this improvement, the last 30 years have seen increased numbers of combined organ transplants. The most common combination involving cardiac transplantation is the heart-lung transplantation [1]; however, heart-kidney, heart-liver, and even heart-lung-liver or heart-lung-kidney combinations are increasing in occurrence. This chapter intends to cover the additional clinical aspects involved in these transplantations from a cardiologist’s perspective; because heart-lung transplantation is by far the most frequent of these combinations, the majority of the chapter will focus on this particular combination as compared to the heart-kidney and heart-liver combinations.