On: U.S. surgeons transplant pig heart into human pati...

[saalweachter]

It's not quite all that seamless - since we can't hook up the nerves, your new heart won't adjust its rate the way your original did.

[tempestn → saalweachter]

I didn't know that. Do all heart transplants come with pacemakers then?

Edit: looks like it's just some nerves, not all.

> Your transplanted heart will respond to activity a little differently. Your heart rate will not increase like it used to. And you will have a higher resting heart rate. This is because some of the nerves that control your heart were cut during your surgery.

https://www.cham.org/HealthwiseArticle.aspx?id=hw30661

[saalweachter → tempestn]

My understanding -- which should be taken with two grains of salt, I'm a programmer not a doctor -- is that the pacemaker cells which actually go "beat now beat now beat now" are part of the heart itself, and transplanted with it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiac_pacemaker

The nerves from the rest of the body are needed to tell these cells "we need more oxygen, beat faster" or "sleepy time, beat slower".

[mleonhard → saalweachter]

Could a surgeon cut the nerves and pacemaker cells away from the diseased heart and implant them into the donor heart?

[tempestn → mleonhard]

I assume if they could reconnect the nerves to the new heart they would. There's no need to replace the pacemaker cells in the new heart with the old ones though.