Perioperative nurses’ challenging roles in heart transplantation

Abstract

According to the obvious evidence, it has been found that heart transplantation was performed in 1967 as the first human heart transplant. After that, there is an evolution of treatment that can be more successful in heart operations. A heart transplant is a surgery to remove the diseased heart from a person and replace it with a healthy one from an organ donor instead. The heart is an important organ that must be transplanted within 4 hours after it has been removed from the donor, since the closure of the aorta during donor heart surgery until it allows blood to flow through the new heart in the recipient. Therefore, the scrub nurses who assist in the heart transplant process are absolutely required to have knowledge completed with specific skills for helping the mentioned patients, including both the recipient and the harvested donor. Also, they have to well-understand in the end-to-end process of the heart transplant from the beginning stage of removing the heart until replaced with the healthy one at the final stage. The nurses must be able to provide nursing care both to prevent complications and monitor all possible risks in 3 stages of surgery.  Thus, the patients can be safely transferred to the ICU. In addition, the scrub nurses must also have good coordination and communication skills in order to plan and prepare between the organ donation surgery team and the transplant surgery team. Manageable skills are also needed to monitor the ischemic time not exceeding 4 hours which will be led to successful surgery for the patients with no complications and can be lived with better quality of life.