The University Hospital and Polytechnic La Fe has successfully carried out a heart transplant on a 70-year-old patient who had remained for a year and a half connected to a ventricular assist device due to severe heart failure.
This procedure constitutes the second documented case in Spain in which a person aged 70 or older receives a heart transplant after undergoing mechanical support, following the one carried out in 2021 on a 76-year-old man at the Hospital Universitario de Gran Canaria Doctor Negrín, as reported by the Generalitat in a press release.
In La Fe’s case, the patient was admitted in 2024 to the Cardiology service, referred from Torrevieja, for advanced-stage heart failure. At that time, his obesity, the associated kidney failure, and his age meant that a direct heart transplant was not considered as the first therapeutic alternative.
Given this situation, the medical team chose to implant a left ventricular assist device, a technology that supports pumping function when the heart is unable to pump blood properly by itself.
After a year and a half and following the appearance of an infectious complication, the La Fe specialists assessed that the heart transplant became the most appropriate option for this patient. Thus, in October 2025, the Cardiovascular Surgery and Cardiology teams successfully carried out the removal of the ventricular device and the subsequent transplant of the new heart.
Good progress after the intervention
The coordinator of Circulatory Mechanical Assistance at La Fe, Salvador Torregrosa, has stated that, currently, the patient "shows a good clinical progress, with correct functioning of the transplanted heart, without symptoms and following the usual immunosuppressive treatment to prevent rejection of the organ."
As the doctors Torregrosa and Francisco Valera, head of the Cardiovascular Surgery service, have emphasized, "Advanced age is a criterion that must be taken into account, but by itself does not rule out patients from the possibility of receiving a heart transplant. This achievement shows that, if the rest of the clinical conditions are suitable, this type of patient can have a favorable outcome."
Both specialists have added that, with a selection "strict and rigorous" of candidates, people in the decade of the 70s can achieve survival rates, functional recovery and independence "similar to those of patients of younger age".
On the other hand, the manager of the Interdepartmental Health Group Valencia Sur and La Fe, José Luis Poveda, has emphasized that the "success" of this case "is from the surgery team, but also from the rest of the specialties that have collaborated in the comprehensive follow-up of the patient".
In the operation and in subsequent care, professionals from the services of Cardiology, Cardiovascular Surgery, Anesthesia, Resuscitation and Operating Block, Intensive Care and Traumatology have been involved, in a multidisciplinary approach focused on the recovery of the patient.