The heart is a muscular organ — about the size of a clenched fist — located in the middle of the rib cage. It works non-stop, pumping around 2,000 gallons of blood throughout the body on a daily basis, beating around 2.5 billion times circulating nearly 50-65 million gallons of blood over an average lifetime. If not cared for, factors such as high cholesterol, obesity and high blood pressure coupled with vices such as smoking and excessive consumption of alcohol can severely damage your blood vessels and your heart.
A heart transplant is a surgical operation wherein a severely damaged heart resulting in end-stage heart failure is replaced with a healthy donor heart. When the heart starts to fail, other vital organs are also affected. So, a heart transplant needs to be done before other organ damage starts. If a heart failure is not treated on time, it can lead to several complications while severely hindering your ability to perform any physical work. It could also cause intense breathlessness.