Medically Reviewed On: May 07, 2008

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: Hi, and welcome to our webcast. I'm Dr. David Marks. Finding out you need a heart transplant is bad enough, but waiting for that transplant can be very stressful. As it turns out, the attitude that you have going into a transplant is very important in determining how well you do.

To talk about that, we have two guests. First is Frank Torre. He is a former Major League baseball player and the recipient of a heart transplant.

Welcome.

FRANK TORRE: I'm glad to be here.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: Next to him is Dr. Mehmet Oz. He is a heart transplant surgeon -- actually, a heart surgeon -- who does transplantations, and he's at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, and he worked on Frank.

MEHMET OZ, MD: It's great to be here.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: Thanks for being here. Frank, what was the hardest part about actually waiting for the transplant?

FRANK TORRE: Well, the most difficult part -- because you have to understand, when I was in Florida I thought I was dead because they weren't doing me any good as far as medication or whatever, so my brother Joe talked me into coming up to New York. When I first got there, they pretty much told me I had three months to live. Within two days they identified my problem, and then they told me I needed a heart transplant. So when I first heard the word "transplant," I figured it was the end of the world. But Columbia has a great way of sending people in and showing me what it's like to be able to live. When you see somebody after three months, six months, I get very excited.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: Someone who's already had a transplant?

FRANK TORRE: Somebody who's already had the transplant, and instead of being uptight, like many of the other people that were waiting, I was very comfortable. That's the key, because I waited 91 days in the hospital being fed intravenously, and the key is to relax.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: Do you think that being relaxed helped you?

FRANK TORRE: Absolutely.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: Through the 90 days and beyond?

FRANK TORRE: Absolutely, because you've got 24 hours in a day, and you're constantly taking tests, you're constantly being fed medication, and they're trying to prime you. Your pre-care doctor -- it's a well-oiled machine, but you have to be in the right frame of mind and you have to be relaxed, and I was able to do that. A lot of them were uptight, and I think I'm here in as good a shape as I am today because of the fact that I was very relaxed.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: Dr. Oz, is this typical psychologically? Do people usually get stressed out, and then can they relax, or do they stay stressed out?

MEHMET OZ, MD: Most patients come to the hospital with an ailment, and they see there's an obstacle they have to overcome in order to return back to normal existence. As crazy as it sounds, patients really have to see illness as an obstacle not to going back to normal life but to evolve, to mature. In fact, you have an opportunity to become a more evolved and mature and aware person by overcoming the ailment that you're suffering from. Someone like Frank was able to take an illness which should have ended his life, which two decades ago would have taken his life, and instead make that into a tool to make him more powerful. That's really the major lesson that caretakers of patients in the hospitals have learned. So our goal was to empower Frank and people like Frank to be able to do more, and the goal therefore becomes, what are those tools? How do you create a scenario, an environment, where patients feel comfortable taking charge in their own future? For that reason we offer all kinds of therapies, some of which are alternative in nature -- music and yoga and massage. Some of them are just plain psychological and supportive care -- educating patients, allowing them to play a bigger role in decision processes that affect them.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: But there's a lot of time spent on the edge, waiting for that heart to come in. It must be very depressing day after day if they don't see their heart coming in.

MEHMET OZ, MD: It's terribly depressing, and in fact, one-third of all patients who have heart surgery of any type suffer from major depression, which is one of the biggest quality-of-life problems that we have for an operation which otherwise succeeds fairly well. The big dilemma, of course, David, is that you have a limited population of donor hearts -- only 2,200 a year -- yet we've got 40,000 or 50,000 patients like Frank who could theoretically benefit from heart transplants.

So we have many people who are actually not just dying to get a heart, but die while waiting for a heart, and that tragedy is impossible to hide, and causes problems like depression that Frank had to overcome.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: Did you feel depressed?

FRANK TORRE: When I first got there, I felt very depressed. It was important for me to realize that without a new heart I was going to die. I wasn't afraid of dying, but you really want to live while you're alive, and when I saw those other transplant patients who were living a comfortable life, I started to relax and I started to get excited, and as far as me personally, I think that was the key of me being here.

DAVID R. MARKS, MD: Thank you for joining us. And thank you for joining our webcast. I'm Dr. David Marks. Goodbye.