When Trent’s heart failure rapidly progressed to needing a heart transplant, doctors at Banner University Heart Institute in Phoenix performed their first implant of the SynCardia TAH to save his life.
PHOENIX, Arizona — Sep. 26, 2018 — Currently, there are approximately 4,000 people in the United States on the waiting list to receive a lifesaving heart transplant. Unfortunately, due to the ongoing shortage of donor hearts, it can take months, even years for a matching donor heart to become available. Many of these transplant candidates are too sick to wait that long.
Trent Lunsford, 47, is one of those patients. Within just a few months of being diagnosed with heart failure, Trent went from leading a normal and healthy life to needing a new heart. To save his life and help stabilize his condition until he can receive a heart transplant, his doctors at Banner University Heart Institute in Phoenix performed their first implant of the SynCardia temporary Total Artificial Heart (TAH).
Now, thanks to their decisive action, Trent has a second chance at life, and it’s a gift he’s grateful for.
“Everything in my life, I look at it differently,” said Trent. “I’m thankful to be here. I still have my wife. I still have my life. What more could I ask for?”
About SynCardia Systems, LLC
Headquartered in Tucson, Ariz., SynCardia manufactures the world’s only commercially approved total artificial heart. In clinical use for more than 35 years and with more than 1,800 implants, the SynCardia temporary Total Artificial Heart (TAH) is the most widely used and extensively studied TAH in the world.
By partnering with, training and supporting healthcare teams at more than 140 transplant hospitals and heart failure programs in more than 20 countries, SynCardia helps create better outcomes for critically ill adults and adolescents whose best chance at survival is total heart replacement. When a donor heart isn’t an available option, SynCardia provides a new heart without the wait for patients with end-stage heart failure affecting both sides of the heart (biventricular failure).