A final evaluation and laboratory work-up at the hospital will be done before you go into the operating room. A transplant takes about three hours, if there are no complications.

After transplant, you will spend one to two days in the recovery room, two to three days in the Intensive Care Unit, and about seven days in the transplant unit. During this time, you will be constantly monitored with testing and regular heart biopsy procedures. (This involves removing small pieces of tissue from your new heart to see if your body is rejecting it.)

Additionally, surgeons at Cedars-Sinai were among the first in the U.S. to use a new technique of heart transplantation, called the bicaval and pulmonary venous anastomotic technique.

This technique involves transplantation of the entire donor heart (rather than only part of the donor heart) and is more time-consuming than the standard technique of heart transplantation, requiring greater surgical skill. Nevertheless, the new technique has led to improvements in the function of the transplanted heart, especially in the first few months after surgery.

The transplant team's experience with the bicaval technique is one of the most extensive and well known in the world.