Since 2005, YouTube has become the third most visited site on the Internet, after Facebook and Google. Major search engines, such as Google, are often the first place physicians go for information. When questions about health care arise, physicians increasingly turn to the Internet, which has changed the way medical students learn, communicate, and share specialized information, rather than to journals and textbooks. Acquiring and sharing medical information via the Internet offers extraordinary electronic-learning (e-learning) possibilities and has gradually changed the learning habits of medical professionals. In North America alone, 74% of adults use the Internet daily, and 80% of all users search for health-related information. Therefore, the shortage of live surgical cases has led to reduced opportunities to witness this major operation, especially for medical students and trainee doctors.Īt present, the Internet has become the largest and most up-to-date source for medical information worldwide. Nevertheless, the volumes of HTx recently slowly declined, largely due to a critical organ donor shortage, and there were approximately 2200 cases yearly in the United States. For instance, if including housewife recipients, approximately 90% of the adult recipients returned to their job following HTx in Japan. Furthermore, the quality of life of HTx recipients is excellent. The overall survival rates after HTx show inspiring results from the data of ISHLT: five-year overall survival rates were 62.49-68.94%, ten-year 47.53-52.08%, and fifteen-year 29.63-37.05%.
Along with the evolving development in patient selection, surgical techniques, perioperative care, and clinical follow-up, the outcomes of HTx have improved over the past four decades. Between 19, there were 97,911 cases of HTx in the world, according to the Registry report of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT). Since the first successful human-to-human HTx was performed in 1967, the survival quality and life span of HTx recipients have improved tremendously. Heart transplantation (HTx) is still the gold standard in the treatment of end-stage heart failure for appropriate candidates.