ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction Early After Heart Transplantation

Heart transplantation is the last option to improve survival in end-stage heart failure. Unfortunately, the increased need for organs far outweighs the availability of donors. To overcome this situation and to increase the number of available hearts for transplantation, donor selection criteria were made less stringent1-3. Nowadays, the one-year survival rate after transplantation is close to 90%4-6, with 50% of the patients surviving for more than 10 years6. The main factor limiting survival is allograft vasculopathy (AV), which occurs in up to 10% and 50% of the patients at 1-year and 5-year after transplantation, respectively5. ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) is rare in these patients and is even more uncommon shortly after transplantation. Despite being an uncommon manifestation of AV, STEMI is usually related to AV6,7.