Original Clinical ScienceHeart transplantation using allografts from older donors: Multicenter study results
Section snippets
Methods
From January 1998 to December 2010, HTx programs at 8 centers in Spain performed 2,102 consecutive HTx surgeries. Only patients >16 years old were included in the study, and patients were divided into 2 groups according to donor age. Group I had received grafts from donors <50 years old, and Group II had received grafts from donors ≥50 years old. Patients with an additional organ transplantation or heart re-transplantation were excluded from the study.
Donor information and recipients’ clinical
Results
Overall, 1,758 (83%) recipients received grafts from donors <50 years old (Group I), and 344 (16%) recipients received grafts from donors ≥50 years old (Group II); only 18 (5%) donors were ≥60 years old. The number of transplants by year and donor age is shown in Table 1; the use of older donors has increased in recent years. There was no difference between age groups in the need for urgent HTx (27.9% in Group I vs 25.7% in Group II). Similarly, although there was a trend toward longer ischemic
Discussion
The present study is one of the largest to analyze the survival after HTx of patients with grafts from older donors, having prospectively recruited patients from 8 centers in Spain that send their data to the Spanish Register for Heart Transplantation. Our analysis indicates that donors ≥50 years old can be safely used for HTx: After adjusting for potential confounding factors, there were no differences in acute or overall mortality.
Despite the gradually increasing use of older donors, there is
Disclosure statement
The authors thank Elaine Lilly, Ph.D., for English language revision of the manuscript and to all Spanish National Register for Heart Transplantation participants.
This study was presented at the 33rd Annual Meeting and Scientific Session of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation, April 24–27, 2013, Montreal, Canada.
This study was supported in part by the Spanish Network on Cardiovascular Research (RIC, Instituto Salud Carlos III, RD12/0042/000). None of the authors has a
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