: Heart size growth after heart transplant in children? I am wondering if they perform a heart transplant to a kid around 10 years, do the heart size increases over the years?

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Pediatric heart transplantation represents approximatively 15% of the total heart transplantations 1.

Several studies have provided some insights on the cardiac growth after heart transplantation. Most of them have shown that the transplanted heart in children follows similar growth as non-transplanted paediatric hearts.

Here some extracts of the major studies in that field:

In a study including 13 infants with a duration of follow-up was
3.1±0.4 years

Both right ventricular (RV) and left ventricular (LV) chamber
dimensions were within the normal range at both early and late time
points and grew normally

D. Bernstein, S. Kolla, M. Miner, P. Pitlick, M. Griffin, V. Starnes, et al. Cardiac growth after pediatric heart transplantation. Circulation, 85 (1992), pp. 1433–1439

Another study reported normal cardiac growth after transplantation
although these patients showed somatic growth deficits due to the
immunosuppresive therapy.

V.R. Zales, K.L. Wright, A.J. Muster, C.L. Backer, D.W. Benson, C. Mavroudis. Ventricular volume growth after cardiac transplantation in infants and children. Circulation, 86 (5 Suppl) (1992), pp. II272–II275

Finally, one large study which included 147 patients and followed them up during several years (up to 10 years) reported similar
results

The ventricular end-diastolic diameters, the ventricular end-diastolic
volumes and ventricular mass increased proportionally 6 to 10 years
after heart transplantation in all patients regardless of the BSA
ratio.

Delmo et al. Influence of size disparity of transplanted hearts on cardiac growth in infants and children. The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. Volume 143, Issue 1, January 2012, Pages 168–177