On August 21, 2008, in the softball finals of the Beijing Olympics, Japan won the championship with a 3-1 victory over the United States. Rei Nishiyama, one of the main players of the Japanese team, once suffered from congenital heart disease and underwent heart transplantation – heart transplantation surgery – in her junior year, after which she fully recovered her health and contributed to the team’s winning the championship. Heart transplantation, accurately referred to as allogeneic in situ heart transplantation, is the surgical transplantation of a healthy heart from a brain-dead person to a heart patient to give the heart patient a new lease on life. Nishiyama Rei was born just one month ago when doctors noticed a heart murmur. Before starting elementary school, she was diagnosed with “aortic stenosis with incomplete closure,” a condition that could not be treated with conventional surgery due to its complexity, and could easily lead to sudden death. When she was in her second year of junior high school, an American organ donor’s heart was a good match for Nishiyama-ri, and she successfully underwent a heart transplant. Nishiyama Li is especially fond of sports. Before the surgery, she could not participate in strenuous activities due to the limitation of her heart disease, but after the surgery, her heart was completely restored to normal, and after hard training, she became a famous softball player. Liu Tianqi, Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Thousand Buddha Mountain Hospital, Shandong Province What kind of patient needs a heart transplant? Generally speaking, heart transplantation can be the best choice for patients whose hearts are no longer able to sustain life, whose medications have limited effect, and whose conventional surgeries are ineffective. Specifically, heart transplantation is suitable for patients with end-stage heart failure caused by various reasons, and its common indications are: (1) advanced primary cardiomyopathy, including dilated, hypertrophic and restrictive cardiomyopathy, etc.; (2) coronary artery disease that cannot be treated by surgery and other measures – that is, ischemic cardiomyopathy; (3) end-stage polyvalvular disease that can not be treated by valve replacement; (4) complex congenital heart diseases that can not be treated with surgical radical treatment, such as left ventricular dysplasia, etc.; (5) other cardiac trauma and cardiac tumors that are difficult to treat surgically; and (6) extensive coronary atherosclerosis and myocardial fibrosis in the transplanted heart after heart transplantation. The predicted life expectancy of the above patients without heart transplantation is less than 50%. The surgical results of heart transplantation are favorable, with current survival rates of 85-88% at 1 year, 80-86% at 5 years, and 70-75% at 10 years after surgery. The longest surviving case internationally has reached 30 years and the longest surviving case domestically has reached 18 years. The total number of heart transplant patients worldwide in the last 30 years exceeds 70,000, with nearly 4,500 or so heart transplants performed annually. After a successful heart transplant, patients can recover to the point where they have no cardiac symptoms and their body functions are rehabilitated, and the vast majority of patients who receive heart transplants can withstand a full workload. Nishiyama Rei of Japan became a softball player after her heart transplant, and won the Olympic Championship in softball with her teammates on August 21, 2008 at the Beijing Olympics. Englishman Price after receiving a heart transplant on April 15, 1985 in the 89th Boston Marathon, in 5 hours and 27 minutes to run the full marathon, this transplanted heart has withstood the test of strenuous exercise. The Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery of Shandong Qianfoshan Hospital has completed a total of 22 cases of heart transplantation, combined heart-kidney transplantation and combined heart-lung transplantation from March 2003 to July 2010, and 20 cases of simple heart transplantation, of which 8 cases survived for more than 5 years and all of them resumed their normal life and work, and the first one has survived for 7 and a half years, and he is now working in a foreign-funded enterprise in Shanghai, and he got married on September 5, 2007, and had The first case has survived for 7.5 years and is now working in a foreign enterprise in Shanghai. With the improvement of economic conditions and health care system, most of the patients with end-stage heart disease are looking forward to heart transplantation which will become a reality. At present, some cities have included heart transplantation and post-operative anti-rejection drugs into the scope of medical insurance, which reduces the financial burden of patients and their families, and in addition, with the introduction of home-made medicines, the medical cost is further reduced. Now the total cost of each heart transplant is around 150,000~200,000 yuan, most patients can afford the treatment cost, which has laid a good foundation for the further development of heart transplantation in China. On August 21, 2008, Japanese players Nishiyama Rei (left) and Someya Mika celebrated scoring in the game. On the same day, Japan won the softball finals of the Beijing Olympics with a 3-1 victory over the United States. Xinhua News Agency reporter Wu Wei took the photo