[Medical-legal evaluation of cardiac transplantation].

Abstract

Heart transplantation is a curative surgical-medical procedure capable of radically modifying the prognosis of patients in the terminal phase who are non-responsive to other treatments and whose life expectancy is < 1 year, thus greatly increasing survival and distinctly improving their quality of life. The authors illustrate the numerous welfare and social security services, guaranteed by our Social Security System for such patient categories, with an overview of damage parameters within the medical-legal field, encompassing areas of civil responsibility. They therefore illustrate the changes, determined by the graft, on the patient's quality of life, while considering both the psycho-physical aspect and the family, social and working relationships before finally elaborating medical-legal guidelines for the assessment of such patients, for both biological damage and in their capacity for work, based on the pathophysiology of the transplanted heart.