Former Vice President Dick Cheney is at the center of controversy once again after his recent heart transplant. Cheney, 71, received the new heart Saturday at a hospital in Falls Church, Va., after being on the cardiac transplant list for more than 20 months. Many are asking if Cheney was too old to receive a new heart and whether money and influence cinched the deal in his favor.
Some medical centers will not perform a heart transplant on patient over 65, but other major centers will perform transplants on patients who are as old as 72. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, 14 percent of last year's 332 heart transplant recipients are over the age of 65.
"Patients from 18 all the way up to 71 years old, are on the same national list and you're listed on the basis of medical urgency and then how long you've been waiting," said Dr. Jonathan Chen, an adjunct associate professor of surgery at Columbia University in New York.
ABC News chief medical editor Dr. Richard Besser said the average waiting time for a heart transplant at UCLA Medical Center is three to six months. Experts differ on whether Cheney's 20-month wait is longer than normal. But Dr. Keith Aaronson, medical director of the heart failure program at the University of Michigan said 20 months "is a relatively long waiting time for an LVAD recipient to wait for a heart transplant."
A Left Ventricular Assist Device, or LVAD, is an auxiliary pump, used when a patient's own heart is unable to pump effectively to meet the body's needs. It can be used as a bridge to get someone to transplant, a bridge while waiting to determine if someone will be a transplant candidate, or as an end in itself.
Cheney has had five heart attacks, the first of which was in 1978 when he was 37 years old, and the fourth in November 2000, after he and former President George W. Bush were elected to the White House. In 2001, Cheney had a pacemaker installed into his chest, and in September 2009, he underwent elective back surgery to treat lumbar spinal stenosis.
Dr. Mary Norin Walsh, director of cardiac transplantation at St. Vincent Hospital in Indiana says she expects Cheney will have an easy recovery from the transplant partly because "he is used to heart surgeries."
The lingering questions are 1) was Cheney too old to receive a heart for transplant and 2) did money and influence play a part in the decision to provide him with a heart for the transplant?
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