When an organ that meets your requirements is located, you will be called into the hospital by the nurse coordinator. The transplant doctors will be checking the donor organ while you are being evaluated and started on medications in preparation for transplantation. If the donated organ is good, you will then be taken to the operating room, put to sleep with an anesthetic, and one of the transplant surgeons will begin the process of preparing the chest cavity for removal of your heart.

The surgeon will begin by exposing the chest cavity through a cut in the ribcage. The surgeon will then open the pericardium (a membrane that covers the entire heart) in order to remove your diseased heart. The back part of your own left atrium will be left in place, but the rest of the heart will be removed.

The new heart will be carefully trimmed and sewn to fit the remaining parts of your old heart. This transplant method is called an "Orthotopic procedure". This is the most common method used to transplant hearts.

The patient will be given medications both before and during the operation to prevent them from rejecting the new heart. After the operation, the patient will be taken to a special unit and hospital floor for recovery, where they will stay in the hospital until the doctor believes they are ready to go home. How long the patient stays in the hospital will depend on the following factors:

-Their health

-How well the new heart is working

-Their ability to learn to take care of their new heart transplant

http://www.cts.usc.edu/ht-pg-hearttransplantprocedure.html