Cardiologists see this happen all too often: A patient is waiting in the hospital for a heart transplant, only to be disqualified because their fitness has fallen with each day in bed.
Dismayed by such cases, Radha Gopalan, a heart transplant cardiologist at Banner–University Medical Center Phoenix, decided to try a twist on other rehabilitation programs.
There’s cardiac rehabilitation, a set of programs designed to return people to healthy activity after a heart attack, surgery, or other serious cardiovascular event.
There’s cardiac prehab, an outpatient effort to prepare patients before they undergo the rigors of cardiac surgery and recovery, including heart transplantation.
Now there’s in-patient cardiac prehab for people waiting to receive a heart transplant. Patients on the transplant waitlist who are admitted to the hospital for worsening heart failure, abnormal heart rhythms, or coronary artery disease — the most common conditions leading up to transplant — can now take part in a novel program that keeps them from failing further and losing their hope.
