Special Issue

Advances in Heart Transplantation

Submission Deadline: October 31, 2026 (Open) Submit Now

Guest Editor

Amit Pawale, MD

Associate Professor of Surgery, Surgical Director of Heart Transplant & Mechanical Circulatory Support, Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, Mo, USA

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Research Interests: Cardiac surgery; mechanical circulatory support; heart transplant; heart failure; extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO); aortic valve replacement; ventricular assist devices (VAD)

About This Topic

Heart transplantation remains a definitive, life-saving therapy for patients with end-stage refractory heart failure. In recent years, the field has undergone significant change driven by innovations in donor utilization, peri-operative management, and post-transplant care. Advances such as donation after circulatory death, explorations of xenotransplantation, and innovative organ preservation and perfusion technologies have expanded the potential donor pool, while the growing adoption of mechanical circulatory support devices has reshaped both transplant candidacy and early graft management. Despite these advances, significant challenges persist, including donor organ scarcity, primary graft dysfunction, and long-term graft failure related to rejection and chronic allograft vasculopathy. Addressing these challenges requires continued collaborative innovation across surgical, biomedical, and translational domains.

This Special Issue aims to highlight contemporary advances in heart transplantation, with a focus on novel donor strategies, evolving techniques in organ preservation and implantation, mechanical circulatory support as a bridge to transplantation, emerging bioengineered and xenotransplantation approaches, and evolving clinical strategies to improve short- and long-term transplant outcomes. We welcome original research papers, mini and full reviews, and commentaries that advance the understanding of modern heart transplantation.

Keywords

Heart transplantation; donor after circulatory death; xenotransplantation; organ preservation; mechanical circulatory support

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted through the LIDSEN Submission System. Detailed information on manuscript preparation and submission is available in the Instructions for Authors. All submitted articles will be thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process and will be processed following the Editorial Process and Quality Control policy. Upon acceptance, the article will be immediately published in a regular issue of the journal and will be listed together on the special issue website, with a label that the article belongs to the Special Issue. LIDSEN distributes articles under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) License in an open-access model. The authors own the copyright to the article, and the article can be free to access, distribute, and reuse provided that the original work is correctly cited.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). Research articles and review articles are highly invited. Authors are encouraged to send the tentative title and abstract of the planned paper to the Editorial Office (transplantation@lidsen.com) for record. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Editorial Office.

Welcome your submission!