Azerbaijan, Baku, September 27 /Trend I.Isabalayeva /
Today there is all the necessary criteria in Azerbaijan to carry out heart transplant surgery, Deputy Health Minister Elsever Agayev told Trend.
According to him, this is down to the infrastructure of health facilities and human resources.
Earlier, successful transplants of other organs have already been held in several Azerbaijani clinics he said.
The deputy minister stressed the biggest problem in the issue of heart transplants in the country and in the world is a shortage of donors.
Only five per cent of the people awaiting heart transplant surgery in the world can find a donor. For these operations, donors with brain death documentation are needed as after the donor's biological life ends. This in turn, is often not accepted by the families of these patients, the deputy minister said.
According to him, the main way to solve problem of donors is transplant of an artificial heart. Such operations are being conducted at leading world transplant centres.
In January 2013 the Central Clinical Hospital of Azerbaijan carried out a successful operation to transplant an artificial heart. The patient is still alive with the artificial heart after eight months.