Concerned about your heart? The American Heart Association's Web site offers a comprehensive, easy-to-use reference guide with information on heart- and stroke-related topics as well as biostatistical fact sheets.

A 24,000-member nonprofit, professional, medical society and teaching institution, the ACC offers this page to help educate patients on a wide range of issues concerning cardiovascular health care.

This Web site supplies information and resources to families of children with congenital and acquired heart disease, adults with congenital heart defects, and the professionals who work with them. Includes support-group contact information by state.

The Jewish Hospital Heart and Lung Institute Web site gives physicians, researchers, and patients information on clinical trials, upcoming symposia, treatment options, and medical developments.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute leads a national program in research and educational activities relating to heart, blood vessel, lung and blood diseases.

Home page to the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, this comprehensive site offers information ranging from medical breakthroughs to ways to reduce your risk of developing cardiovascular disease. For the latest information about the total artificial heart and mechanical heart assist devices, go to www.texasheartinstitute.org/mcsthi.html.

The UNOS annual report provides statistics on transplants by characteristics such as age, race, gender, blood type, previous transplant, citizenship, etc. The site also offers links to information about survival rates, median waiting times, and waiting list patient characteristics.

The McGowan Center, part of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Health Care System, researches and develops reliable and affordable artificial hearts. In addition, they are researching and developing artificial lungs, livers, kidneys, pancreases, and blood.

Information about ACA, access to a thorough, online library, and a National Peer Network are among this site's extensive offerings.

The AAOS's Web site provides patient information on a wide variety of topics, ranging from arthritis to total joint replacement. You can also search their database, MEDLINE, which is the major index to articles from more than 3,000 biomedical journals, from 1966 to the present.

The Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary's Web site supplies information about the many treatments available for eye, ear, nose, and throat ailments. One part of the site provides answers to commonly asked questions about cochlear implants.

This site has many interesting articles about the Retinal Impant Project, a collaboration between Harvard University and MIT. The project's goal is to develop a microelectronic prosthesis to restore some vision to patients with retinal disease, specifically macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa.

This site offers information about financing transplants and transplant centers around the world. People who have had organ transplants recount their experiences. The site also offers answers to commonly asked questions and a variety of transplant statistics.

ABIOMED conducts research and development of cardiac assist and heart replacement technology. It is currently developing a battery-powered totally implantable heart replacement device, the AbioCor.

Thermo Cardiosystems produces the HeartMate left ventricular assist device, which has been successfully implanted in more than 2,000 patients to date.

Uses the owner's manual format to talk in a frank and accessible way about heart surgery and recovery. Includes case histories that enable readers to make up their own minds about various procedures.

A top cardiovascular surgeon talks about integrating traditional Western medicine - drugs and surgery - with alternative approaches to health care.

Enhanced by full-color illustrations, this book discusses some of the latest research on heart disease, diabetes, and other related diseases. Offers tips, including recipes, on how to prevent heart disease.

A Wall Street Journal reporter investigates the scientific and ethical issues surrounding organ transplantation, using a focus on patients receiving new livers at the Baylor University Medical Center in Texas as a springboard to examine the field as a whole.

This is a biography of the late Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, who trained the heart-transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard and influenced other leading heart transplant surgeons, including O. H. Frazier and Denton Cooley.