Recovering from heart transplant surgery
After a serious illness and time spent on the heart transplant waiting list, receiving a transplant can be a relief. Your lifelong care with your new heart starts with recovery from heart transplant surgery. While your medical team looks after your physical health, our social workers are available with emotional support and resources that can help you transition back to living at home.
In general, you’ll be up and walking a few days after surgery and can leave the hospital in 10 to 14 days. Most people feel healthy enough to resume normal activities within six months.
The steps of heart transplant recovery include:
After surgery, you’ll spend about one week in the heart vascular intensive care unit (HVICU). We gradually move you off supportive devices and medications and you start physical therapy and cardiac rehabilitation to help you get moving. You’ll begin taking immunosuppression medications to prevent rejection.
After the ICU, we move you to a “step-down” hospital room. Here, the transplant team follows your recovery and prepares you for discharge. You undergo frequent testing and medication adjustments.
Before you go home, we make sure both you and your caregivers understand the medications you need to take and the care you’ll need at home. Most heart transplant recipients receive home nursing services and physical therapy during the first month at home. And if you have any questions or concerns, we’re available through our 24/7 call line.
If you need more care than you can get at home, we may recommend inpatient rehabilitation to bridge this transition. Penn Medicine’s rehabilitation partners provide personalized care to help you continue your recovery and gain the strength you need to go home.
After discharge, you come to the Penn Transplant Institute every week at first and then every other week. At about six months, we reduce visits to once a month and, eventually, to every six months.
We work together with you on a recovery plan that helps you heal and get back to all the things you love doing. We also stay in touch with your primary care provider and other specialists, so you get complete care for all your needs.
Continuing your follow-up care with us is vital to minimizing risks to your health, including rejection of the transplanted heart. We’re here with all the care you need for the rest of your life.