Former Vice President Dick Cheney battled heart disease for most of his adult life, a life extended thanks in part to a heart transplant in 2012.
Cheney, who died Monday due to complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, had his first heart attack at the unusually young age of 37. He would go on to survive four more before his heart declined enough to qualify for that transplant.
Heart disease is the nation’s No. 1 killer and Cheney’s decades of health problems illustrate how heart trouble can accumulate — as well as the varied treatments.
Over the years, Cheney underwent quadruple bypass surgery to reroute blood flow around clogged heart arteries as well as less invasive artery-clearing angioplasties. He had a pacemaker implanted to monitor his heartbeat. He also experienced blood vessel problems in his legs.
Heart attacks damage the heart’s muscle, eventually making it harder to pump properly. After Cheney’s fifth heart attack in 2010, he acknowledged “increasing congestive heart failure.” He received another implant, a small pump called a “left ventricular assist device” or LVAD. That device took over the job of his heart’s main pumping chamber, powered by batteries worn in a fanny pack.
Then in March 2012, at the age of 71, Cheney received a heart transplant. Like him, more than 70% of heart transplant recipients live at least five years, many longer. Cheney was older than a typical heart transplant recipient; most are 50 to 64 years old. But he was one of 362 people age 65 or older who received a new heart in 2012, according to the U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplant Network, or OPTN.
There’s a huge need for more transplantable hearts. Hundreds of thousands of adults suffer from advanced heart failure yet many are never placed on the transplant list, in part because of the organ shortage. According to the organ network, 4,572 people received a heart transplant last year. That number of has grown gradually since Cheney’s — there were 2,378 transplants in 2012. So have the number of recipients 65 or older — 905 last year.
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