Durable Mechanical Circulatory Support versus Organ Transplantation: Past, Present, and Future

For more than 30 years, heart transplantation has been a successful therapy for patients with terminal heart failure. Mechanical circulatory support (MCS) was developed as a therapy for end-stage heart failure at a time when cardiac transplantation was not yet a useful treatment modality. With the more successful outcomes of cardiac transplantation in the 1980s, MCS was applied as a bridge to transplantation. Because of donor scarcity and limited long-term survival, heart transplantation has had a trivial impact on the epidemiology of heart failure. Surgical implementation of MCS, both for short- and long-term treatment, affords physicians an opportunity for dramatic expansion of a meaningful therapy for these otherwise mortally ill patients. This review explores the evolution of mechanical circulatory support and its potential for providing long-term therapy, which may address the limitations of cardiac transplantation.