Why are heart replacements (transplants) supposedly so hard to do?

Question

I say we have the tech. to build artificial hearts easily and replace them. I think someone doesnt want people to live long..

Answer 1

real or artificial it is very hard to do. Crack a chest open down the midline and spreading the ribs to get to the heart, arteries, and veins, not to mention the heart's electrical system. So far artificial devices require lots of fine tuning and batteries that need replacement.

Answer 2

Contraindications
Some patients are less suitable for a heart transplant, especially if they suffer from other circulatory conditions unrelated to the heart. The following conditions in a patient would increase the chances of complications occurring during the operation:
* Kidney, lung, or liver disease
* Insulin-dependent diabetes with other organ dysfunction
* Life-threatening diseases unrelated to heart failure
* Vascular disease of the neck and leg arteries.
Heart transplantation must be classified as a highly experimental procedure, generally failing because of rejection.
Heart transplant prolongs the life of a patient who would otherwise die. About 80% of heart transplants are alive 2 years after the operation. The main problem, as with other transplants, is graft rejection. If rejection can be controlled, the patient's survival can be increased to over 10 years.
The major problems are the same for all major organ transplants:
* Finding a donor
* Fighting the rejection effect
* The cost of the surgery
* Avoiding infection
* Avoiding blocked blood vessels in the transplanted organ
Please see the web pages for more details on Heart transplantation.

Answer 3

Technically, heart transplants are challenging but the risk of rejection is the biggest problem associated with a transplant. Artificial hearts also present their own problems, clotting, foreign body reactions, lifespan of the artificial heart, battery life, hemolysis, etc. These are not as simple as they might seem.

Answer 4

That's still heart replacement. Who's going to do the surgery with the artificial heart?