4.09 Heart transplant. Consider under a disability for 1 year following surgery; thereafter, evaluate residual impairment under the appropriate listing.
After your heart transplant, SSA considers you disabled for 1 year following the surgery because there is a greater likelihood of rejection of the transplanted heart and infection during the first year. The body considers a transplanted heart a foreign body, and the immune system will attempt to “reject” it by marshaling a defense against the organ with immune cells and antibodies. Doctors prescribe anti-rejection medications to suppress the immune system’s rejection response. Besides having numerous side effects, these medicines suppress the immune system causing individuals to be at high risk for various infections.
Heart transplant patients generally meet SSA’s definition of disability before they undergo transplantation. This is because significant heart disease and associated loss of function is what results in individuals getting on a heart transplant waiting list in the first place. SSA looks at your longitudinal (over time) medical record to determine the onset date of your disability.
However, SSA will not automatically assume that you became disabled the day your name is placed on a transplant waiting list. Doctors attempt to get patients on transplant waiting lists as soon as possible knowing that it may take months or years before a suitable donor heart is found. You may be placed on a waiting list based on a diagnosis of a cardiac condition that may eventually require a transplant, but just being placed on a transplant waiting list does not mean that your condition fulfills SSA criteria for disability.