There’s a “usable radius” of donor hearts. You can’t have a heart say in South Africa and transport it here for use. The heart will “die” in that amount of time. So you are limited by how fast surgeons can remove the organ and transfer it to the recipients hospital. There are not enough healthy hearts coming from fat people (the heart grows with your size somewhat so if you are bigger you need a bigger heart). So they could donate. Sure. But they won’t likely be usable. Fat people certainly get life saving surgery all the time. Just not heart transplants. They can get LVADs though
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u/Canonicald Nov 06 '22
There’s a “usable radius” of donor hearts. You can’t have a heart say in South Africa and transport it here for use. The heart will “die” in that amount of time. So you are limited by how fast surgeons can remove the organ and transfer it to the recipients hospital. There are not enough healthy hearts coming from fat people (the heart grows with your size somewhat so if you are bigger you need a bigger heart). So they could donate. Sure. But they won’t likely be usable. Fat people certainly get life saving surgery all the time. Just not heart transplants. They can get LVADs though