Are heart transplants successful in treating coronary heart disease?

Heart transplants and the artificial heart are perhaps the epitome of this approach in treating coronary heart disease, of what happens when we fail to go back very far in the chain of causation.  

 

Dr. Christian Barnard captured the imagination of the world when he performed the first heart transplant in 1967. This was the zenith of heart surgery's golden era, and it seemed then as though anything would be possible.

 

Unfortunately, the same pattern again emerged. New problems occurred (rejection of transplanted hearts), the old problem recurred (even hearts with normal coronary arteries at the time of transplant often became clogged within a few years, since patients hadn't changed their lifestyles), and the approach was extremely expensive (at least $100,000 per operation) and invasive. In general, heart transplants are now performed primarily to treat cardiomyopathy in younger people, a degenerative disease of the heart muscle that is usually unrelated to coronary heart disease and for which this operation can be better justified.