Nov. 10 marked 30 years since Baptist Health-Little Rock performed the first heart transplant in Arkansas. In the years since, Baptist Health has continued to provide treatment at Baptist Health Heart Failure and Transplant Institute.
Baptist Health hosted a 30th anniversary luncheon on the Baptist Health-Little Rock campus to honor and recognize heart transplant recipients from the past three decades.
Mary E. Wilson of Jacksonville received the first transplant in 1989. Wilson had suffered from severe cardiomyopathy, and her heart muscle was failing and could not pump blood efficiently. Without the heart transplant, her prognosis for survival stood at less than a year.
Since then, more than 289 heart transplants have been performed at Baptist Health. Baptist Health continued its long history of heart milestones in 1999 when it introduced left ventricular assist devices (LVAD) to the state and in 2017 when Arkansas’ first total artificial heart was implanted in a patient.
The Baptist Health Heart Transplant Program is part of the Baptist Health Heart Failure and Transplant Institute. Based on the Baptist Health-Little Rock campus, the program provides a central location for patients who have had an organ transplant or are awaiting a transplant to be evaluated in the most timely and comfortable manner.
Baptist Health offers patients extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), LVAD, total artificial heart, and heart transplant.
Baptist Health also actively participates in heart failure clinical trials, advancing the system’s collective knowledge about beneficial therapies.