Why are partial heart transplants important?

Abstract

Why are partial heart transplants important?'Partial heart transplantation' has generated media coverage recently and has been the topic of review articles in this journal 1 and elsewhere. 2 At first glance, this might seem like an interesting discussion topic but perhaps only applicable to a small number of patients, and performed by a handful of surgeons-a niche operation, so to speak. I suspect this is far from the case: instead, I think that this may lead to a paradigm shift in neonatal heart surgery and in pediatric heart transplantation.