Baptist Heart Institute celebrated the 40th anniversary of the first adult heart transplant conducted in the Mid-South with a luncheon on Friday, Oct. 31 at FedEx Event Center in Shelby Farms Park in Memphis. During the event, Baptist honored heart transplant recipients and advanced heart failure patients who are on the transplant list awaiting a new heart.
The anniversary event also marked 30 years of Baptist Heart Institute offering ventricular assist devices (VAD), which help pump blood from the heart to the rest of the body, for heart failure patients. Attendees enjoyed viewing a display of the evolution of VAD devices during the past 30 years.
“Today, we celebrated 40 years of heart transplants and 30 years of left ventricular assist device (LVAD) therapy at Baptist Memphis,” said Dr. Dmitry Yaranov, program director of Advanced Heart Failure, Heart Transplant and Mechanical Circulatory Support at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis. “This program works because of the team of surgeons, cardiologists, intensivists, nurses and coordinators, as well as rehab, pharmacy, social work, perfusion, administration and other partners, who believe in building something bigger than any one of us. Our impact is real, and we are just getting started.”
Baptist Memphis is currently the fourth-busiest implanting center for the HeartMate 3 LVAD in the U.S.
