Advanced Heart Failure Requires Advanced Care

The Advanced Heart Failure and Transplantation program at UK HealthCare leads the state in offering advanced surgical options, including ventricular assist devices and heart transplants, so that patients can overcome heart failure and thrive again. With ongoing clinical trials focused on a wide range of topics – including allogenic stem cells for chronic heart failure and hemodynamic-guided management of heart failure using CardioMEMS – we are able to offer access to treatment options not widely available elsewhere.

High performing

Rated as “High Performing” in Heart Failure and Heart Bypass Surgery by U.S. News & World Report for 2018-2019, we’re continually pushing ourselves to achieve the best outcomes. In 2018, we performed 30 heart transplants, and our latest reported survival rate to the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients is 94.22 percent – higher than the expected rate of 91.16 percent.

Continued growth

Over the course of 2018, our heart failure team implanted 41 LVADs, and we continue to work with HeartMate II, HeartMate III, HeartWare and Total Artificial Heart. Since launching the program in 2015, our team has implanted more than 70 patients with CardioMEMS.

Additionally, the UK Mechanical Circulatory Support program continues to grow. Our ECMO team achieved gold-level Center of Excellence status from the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization in 2018, and our unique ECMO transport team now travels up to four hours to transfer critically ill patients with shock on ECMO to UK HealthCare in Lexington.