Dental care for cardiac transplant patients in the UK.

Abstract

Cardiac transplantation replaces a severely damaged non-functioning heart with a healthy heart from a donor. Within the UK, the number of cardiac transplants being performed each year is increasing, with significant improvements in longer-term survival. Dental professionals are therefore more likely to see and manage these patients in the pre- and post-transplant periods. This paper proposes a protocol for the dental management of these patients, reinforced by a case series from Scotland and London.