Industry Literature

In the United States, heart allocation is administered by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). UNOS collects demographics and clinical data for all transplant candidates, donors, and recipients listed since 1995. While the data is available to the public upon requests; it has been used predominately for research rather than clinical decision making, transplant patient use and policy makers. The aim of this project is to build a web application to visualizes UNOS data and promote easy access to summary statistics for diverse members of the transplant community.

Among patients who undergo orthotopic heart transplant (OHT), intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) detection of coronary allograft vasculopathy (CAV), defined as ≥ 0.5 mm increase in maximal intimal thickness (Δ MIT), is associated with worse outcomes at 5 years. Other IVUS-derived measurements of arterial plaque, while validated in studies of coronary atherosclerosis, have not been well studied in CAV.

Despite the controversial effect of elevated heart rate on progression of cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV), heart-rate-slowing agents are frequently prescribed with the assumption that higher heart rate predicts worse outcomes in cardiovascular disease.

Psychosocial assessment is a key component of heart transplantation (HT) evaluation. Criteria such as patient compliance to medical therapy, level of social support, and history of substance abuse are important considerations when assessing appropriateness for listing. The aim of this study was to characterize the patients who do not satisfy listing criteria due to psychosocial criteria and assess the reasons for which they are rejected.

Our hypothesis is that by improving access to advanced heart failure specialists (AHFS) through partnered outreach clinics, we can increase the number of patients benefitted by advanced heart failure (AHF) therapies delivered at our center. This partnered network approach can potentially overcome distance barriers, optimize referral timing, and expedite access to AHFS from the regional center of excellence.

With the growing shortage of organ donors, marginal donor organs are increasingly accepted, which may partially explain the continued increase in donor age. The potential interactions between donor-recipient (D/R) age difference and outcomes after heart transplantation (HT) are not well known, and organ allocation systems do not routinely consider D/R age matching. We thus aimed to study the impact of D/R age difference on HT outcomes.

The new French allocation system based on the candidate risk score (CRS) considered donor-recipient matching and implemented nationwide donor heart sharing. In candidates for whom the CRS did not predict accurately waitlist mortality score exceptions can be requested. This study aimed to describe the heart allocation modalities and donor-recipient matching since implementation of the new system on January 2, 2018.

Improved utilization of donor hearts would benefit chronic heart failure patients awaiting transplant. Limitations to cardiac allograft preservation include ischemic time, donor organ quality, and accurate graft assessment. We hypothesized that human hearts declined for transplant may be resuscitated after varied ischemic times. The unique studies performed within the Visible Heart® Laboratory for over two decades have provided unique insights relative to optimizing large mammalian functions post-cardioplegia.

Ex situ heart perfusion (ESHP) is a novel method for preservation of the donated heart in a semi-physiologic state and provides the opportunity to evaluate pre-transplant function. Because of the well-described extraordinary metabolic requirements of the heart, efficient metabolic support is critical for optimal preservation of function and viability. Our aim was to determine changes in energy metabolism/energy substrates during extended ex situ perfusion of hearts in two different perfusion modes, working mode (WM) and non-working mode (NWM).

The OCS Heart EXPAND Trial is a prospective, multi-center trial to evaluate the effectiveness of the OCS™ to resuscitate, preserve and assess donor hearts that may not meet current standard donor heart criteria for transplantation to potentially improve donor heart utilization for transplantation.