What a Heart Transplant Actually Costs a Foreign Patient in India

The law is unambiguous that an available organ goes to an Indian citizen first. But there's a specific exception for in-house patients: if an organ becomes available at the same hospital where a foreign national is already admitted, and the regional transplant organisation refuses it or nobody from that region can retrieve it in time, that in-house patient, even if foreign, moves to the top of the list. The hospital only has to inform NOTTO directly, rather than waiting on a no-objection certificate from every regional organisation in the country, a process that can otherwise cost the hours that make an organ unusable.

Temporary VA-ECMO, or reassessing the patient for an LVAD, buys the time we need. The durability of these devices has changed the calculation: an LVAD that used to be a five-year solution five years ago is now good for a decade or more.

There's no absolute guarantee, but our programme gives a referred patient the best realistic odds in the country. My team has presence across the north through Artemis in Delhi, the south through Kims and Aster hospitals in Bangalore, and the west through KD Hospital in Ahmedabad and a Mumbai centre, which puts us in direct reach of three of India's five active regional transplant organisations. We're also the only team doing hypothermic oxygenated perfusion, which extends a donor heart's viable cold storage time from about four hours to eight to ten hours and widens the geography we can pull an organ from. Matching still depends heavily on the patient: blood group, a height in the 160 to 180 cm range, and a weight in the 70 to 90 kg range, because we can only accept a heart within about 10% of body surface area or 10 cm of height. The longest wait I've seen a foreign heart transplant patient go through is 12 to 14 months. Of the 20 to 25 foreign patients we've transplanted over the last five to six years, all but two eventually received a heart.

About a year, not more than that, once a foreign national is properly listed.

Roughly a week for the core workup. That includes a right heart catheterisation, with the numbers reviewed at a transplant or VAD meeting or heart failure clinic before we make a call. To meet regulatory requirements we also need a coronary angiogram and a CT scan of the chest, which sizes the device and the pocket it sits in.

While listed, a patient typically needs a hospital visit about once a fortnight, with monthly hospital and medication expenses of roughly $1,500. Over a typical 12 to 14 month wait, that totals approximately $20,000 in pre-transplant costs before the surgery itself is even scheduled.

A HeartMate 3, the current standard adult device, costs close to $100,000, a price driven in part by a 100% import duty on American-manufactured devices. The Jarvik 2000, used for paediatric patients, is considerably more affordable at around $20,000 to $25,000.

Possibly. An indigenously developed LVAD, built with an Australian partner and the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, has completed its second phase of human trials. If it clears CE approval, potentially as early as late 2026, and later FDA approval, device costs could fall to less than half of what an imported American device costs today.

Artemis's package for a foreign patient covers $45,000 for the transplant itself and $5,500 for the pre-transplant workup, bringing the total surgery cost to just under $50,000 including the additional legal and administrative requirements that apply to a foreign national.