Heart Transplants: Dick Cheney And The History Of The Procedure

Dick Cheney's heart transplant at age 71 has left many wondering if the former Vice President was too old to undergo the procedure.

Often, hospitals limit transplants to patients who are 65 or younger, according to Reuters. But Cheney's 20-month wait attests to the fact that more people at advanced ages are receiving care once reserved for younger patients.

That wouldn’t be possible without decades of research, experimentation and advancements in both the medicine and technology involved in a heart transplant, a procedure that was only a glimmer of an idea 100 years ago.

Here's a look at some of the most noted moments in heart transplant history over the past century.

For more on heart disease, click here.

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Comments

[ABXNOMORE]

10:47 PM on 03/28/2012

Couldn't they have saved Bin Laden's heart for him?

[Brian J Nibbe]

09:14 AM on 03/28/2012

My aunt was the first woman to ever survive an open heart procedure, it is an amazing operation. My wife had a hole closed in her heart this past year. What a wonderful hope to someone who was previously given a death sentence without a new heart.

[Brian J Nibbe]

09:12 AM on 03/28/2012

I am reading the comments and have an observation... how many of you that are upset that he got a heart are also for the Obamacare plan? Are you that are upset also advocating the rationing of healthcare that is so vigorously denied by the liberals as never going to happen? I think you mentality that he does not deserve it shows completely that human disdain for a person/people group considered unworthy is exactly what will happen. To hope for the goodness of man in doing the "right thing" you are trusting in a pot of gold at the end of your liberal rainbows.

[cloudmaker]

08:58 AM on 03/28/2012

I wonder who lost out on a heart when far-too-old Cheney jumped the line.

[kiran1207]

08:04 PM on 03/28/2012

he probably had the person killed

[ABXNOMORE]

10:13 PM on 03/28/2012

Excellent question.

[ABXNOMORE]

10:55 PM on 03/28/2012

They could have saved Bin La den's ticker for him rather than cheating someone who was waiting on the list.

[justitia]

05:51 PM on 03/27/2012

So, the guy has a heart after all?

[jaslyn]

03:02 PM on 03/27/2012

his new heart will spend the rest of it's days trying to get out of there.

[H P]

09:21 AM on 03/27/2012

I wonder if he got the heart of a liberal with an open heart?

[SoapboxKing]

03:00 PM on 03/27/2012

if so, it would be a case of the heart rejecting the body instead of the body rejecting the heart.

[cloudmaker]

08:59 AM on 03/28/2012

Excelent.

[TWM1]

06:56 AM on 03/27/2012

Just think we paid for that.

[emily00011]

04:29 AM on 03/27/2012

Hopefully his heart surgeries are teaching him the true meaning of pain.

[americanpatriot4ever]

11:42 PM on 03/26/2012

Cheney's autobiography will be titled "Too rich to die."

[Grichde]

11:38 PM on 03/26/2012

Good thing he got his heart before the Obama death panels denied an old man of his health care.

[americanpatriot4ever]

11:47 PM on 03/26/2012

No society can afford to keep old men alive at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars per additional year of life. Old men are supposed to die. It's the natural order of life.

[mitcheisenstein]

01:23 AM on 03/27/2012

Thats not what will happen. What will happen is that medical doctors salaries will have to drop down to a couple of hundred thousand per year, and the hospitals will have to stop duplicating and stealing. The USA has the highest infant mortality rate of the Western world and is the only nation not offerring universal health care. The current health care is a deriviative of slavery.

[americanpatriot4ever]

10:19 PM on 03/26/2012

Only one kind of 71 year old deserves a heart transplant: the kind that would not sign up for one so that the donor heart would be given to someone younger. Cheney will certainly reward the hospital with a large charitable donation for their ethical lapse. The rich and powerful have again distorted the system to their benefit. It's shameful.

[Indiegirl99]

02:25 AM on 03/28/2012

I recently watched an old episode of Hopkins 24/7 which follows real doctors at John Hopkins. One of the episodes followed two lung transplants, both given to women who appeared to be in their late 60's early 70's. Not saying I wouldn't be horrified if my loved ones heart went into Cheney but he is not the first 70 something year old to get a organ transplant. At least he was on the list for 20 months, not 20 days.

[americanpatriot4ever]

02:58 AM on 03/28/2012

He should have had the decency to let the donor heart go to someone who had not had the benefit of 71 years of life. But that would have been uncharacteristic of his whole life.

[cloudmaker]

09:00 AM on 03/28/2012

So he says and as we all know he's famous for his veracity.

[William Jamison]

09:46 PM on 03/26/2012

Can the author tell us how much it cost Cheney to get to the head of the line?

[Richcrafter]

09:04 PM on 03/26/2012

Wasn't this an "installation" and not a transplant?

[garymc8]

08:41 PM on 03/26/2012

Certainly had to have been about a million people more deserving of that heart than most vile living human.

[ABXNOMORE]

10:19 PM on 03/28/2012

There were. The public should be outraged.

Most die in the prime of their lives waiting and waiting.