Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who has had five heart attacks over more than three decades, now has a new heart … one that was transplanted into him this weekend. The 71-year-old is recuperating in a Virginia hospital.

AP via The Guardian:

Cheney was recovering on Saturday night at the intensive care unit of Inova Fairfax hospital in Virginia after surgery earlier in the day.

The former vice-president suffered a heart attack in 2010, his fifth since the age of 37. That year, he had surgery to have a small pump installed to help his heart keep working. It was one of the few steps left, short of a transplant, to stay alive in the face of what he acknowledged was “increasing congestive heart failure”.

The pump, called a left ventricular assist device, is mainly used for short periods to buy time for potential transplant candidates awaiting a donor organ. The fact that doctors resorted to it illustrated the perilous condition he was in.

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