Cerebrovascular complications of cardiac transplantation

Abstract

Cardiac transplantation is recognized treatment for many patients with end-stage heart failure. As the transplant patient’s survival has dramatically increased over the past 30 years, neurologic sequelae of cardiac transplantation have come to be recognized as a common and often feared complication of the cardiac transplantation process. We review many of the cerebrovascular complications of cardiac transplantation in adults with a focus on ischemic brain syndromes, intracerebral hemorrhage, infections of the central nervous system, and seizure as they pertain to the cardiac transplant patient.