Second study shows no significant difference in patients’ survival based on donor BMI
MONDAY, Dec. 10, 2018 (HealthDay News) — Transplant patients with hearts from donors with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and obese donors have similar survival rates as patients with other donor hearts, according to two studies published in the December issue and online Dec. 4 in Circulation: Heart Failure and the Journal of the American Heart Association, respectively.
Yasbanoo Moayedi, M.D., from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and colleagues assessed the geographic distribution, clinical characteristics, and post-transplant outcomes of HCV+ donor hearts. The researchers found that 1,306 HCV+ donors were recovered from 2014 to 2017; of these, 82.5 percent were aged 18 to 49 years and were mainly from the Appalachia region. In this interval, 64 HCV+ donor hearts (5 percent) were transplanted. At 12 months, the match-adjusted risk difference in survival compared with all matched case-controls was estimated at 0.87 percent (P = 0.83).
Yasuhiro Shudo, M.D., Ph.D., from the Stanford University School of Medicine in California, and colleagues used data from the United Network for Organ Sharing database for all 31,920 adult patients undergoing orthotopic heart transplantation from 2000 through 2016. The cohort was stratified by donor body mass index: 40.8, 35.3, 15.4, and 8.5 percent of patients received a heart from a normal-weight, overweight, obese, and extremely obese donor, respectively. The researchers observed no significant difference in the likelihood of patient survival based on a donor’s body mass index (P = 0.08). In the adjusted survival analyses, there were no significant differences in the probability of overall survival among the four groups (P = 0.25).
“It is time to stop listening to the shouldn’ts and the don’ts, and fulfill the true promise of organ transplantation,” write the authors of an accompanying editorial. “We owe it to our patients.”
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