Causes of Death
One patient died during surgery due to cardiogenic shock. In this case, the surgical indication was EHF due to Fontan failure, and it had 6.8 and 11.5 hours of ischemia and surgical time, respectively. There were 82 surviving recipients. The postoperative mortality was 15.9% (13 patients), and the principal causes of death were infection in 6 patients and acute rejection in 5. Hospital mortality was 7.3%; 2 died in the post-HTx 72-hours, one from cardiogenic shock, and one during reoperation due to revision of hemostasis. After the post-HTx 72-hours, three patients died from septic shock and one from acute humoral rejection. During the follow-up after hospital discharge, three patients died from cardiogenic shock due to 3R acute cellular rejection, two from septic shock, one from massive pulmonary thromboembolism, and one from septic and cardiogenic shock due to 3R acute cellular rejection. One of the recipients, who died from cardiogenic shock due to 3R acute cellular rejection, had blood type O- while the heart donor was O+. Causes of death after HTx are shown in Table 3.