Heart Health Heart Health Basics

Heart Transplant: Coping with Preoperative Stress

Summary & Participants

For many heart transplant recipients, the toughest part of the experience is the stressful waiting period. Join heart surgeon Mehmet Oz and Frank Torre, ex-baseball star, as they discuss preoperative stress and how it can affect your recovery period.

Medically Reviewed On: May 07, 2008

Webcast Transcript

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: Hi, and welcome to our webcast. I'm Dr. David Marks. Finding out you need a heart transplant is bad enough, but waiting for that transplant can be very stressful. As it turns out, the attitude that you have going into a transplant is very important in determining how well you do.

To talk about that, we have two guests. First is Frank Torre. He is a former Major League baseball player and the recipient of a heart transplant.

Welcome.

FRANK TORRE: I'm glad to be here.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: Next to him is Dr. Mehmet Oz. He is a heart transplant surgeon -- actually, a heart surgeon -- who does transplantations, and he's at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, and he worked on Frank.

MEHMET OZ, MD: It's great to be here.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: Thanks for being here. Frank, what was the hardest part about actually waiting for the transplant?

FRANK TORRE: Well, the most difficult part -- because you have to understand, when I was in Florida I thought I was dead because they weren't doing me any good as far as medication or whatever, so my brother Joe talked me into coming up to New York. When I first got there, they pretty much told me I had three months to live. Within two days they identified my problem, and then they told me I needed a heart transplant. So when I first heard the word "transplant," I figured it was the end of the world. But Columbia has a great way of sending people in and showing me what it's like to be able to live. When you see somebody after three months, six months, I get very excited.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: Someone who's already had a transplant?

FRANK TORRE: Somebody who's already had the transplant, and instead of being uptight, like many of the other people that were waiting, I was very comfortable. That's the key, because I waited 91 days in the hospital being fed intravenously, and the key is to relax.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: Do you think that being relaxed helped you?

FRANK TORRE: Absolutely.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: Through the 90 days and beyond?

FRANK TORRE: Absolutely, because you've got 24 hours in a day, and you're constantly taking tests, you're constantly being fed medication, and they're trying to prime you. Your pre-care doctor -- it's a well-oiled machine, but you have to be in the right frame of mind and you have to be relaxed, and I was able to do that. A lot of them were uptight, and I think I'm here in as good a shape as I am today because of the fact that I was very relaxed.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: Dr. Oz, is this typical psychologically? Do people usually get stressed out, and then can they relax, or do they stay stressed out?

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