Heart Transplantation News and Research

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A heart transplant is an operation in which the diseased heart in a person is replaced with a healthy heart from a deceased donor. Ninety percent of heart transplants are performed on patients with end-stage heart failure.

Heart failure is a condition in which the heart is damaged or weakened and can't pump enough blood to meet the body's needs. "End-stage" means the condition has become so severe that all treatments, other than heart transplant, have failed.

Transplantation of pig hearts may solve chronic shortage of donor organs

The goal of harvesting hearts from pigs to solve the chronic shortage of these donor organs appears to be in reach, according to a new scientific review by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

9 Oct 2020

Researchers receive $3.2 million to use AI for improving heart transplant outcomes

A team of researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Clinic, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, were recently awarded a $3.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to enhance research for improving heart transplant outcomes for patients.

5 Oct 2020

Researchers identify roles of matrix stiffness and mechanotransduction in cardiac reprogramming

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in humans. Worldwide, as the population ages, the burden of treating heart failure is increasing; opportunities for heart transplantation cannot keep pace.

31 Aug 2020

Paired surgical approach improves chances for heart transplant in obese patients

Patients with obesity are at higher risk of developing heart failure. And yet, many obese patients face obstacles to getting heart transplants, as recovery is considered to be more challenging and risky in individuals with high body mass.

27 Jul 2020

PET imaging helps researchers to detect transplant patients with cardiac allograft vasculopathy

Myocardial blood flow and myocardial flow reserve have been identified as accurate indicators for graft failure after cardiac transplantation, according to a new study published in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

5 Mar 2020

TSF awards new grants to support research and education programs in cardiothoracic surgery

The Thoracic Surgery Foundation- the charitable arm of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons- has awarded 29 new grants totaling $1,047,500 in support of research and education programs in cardiothoracic surgery.

16 Feb 2020

BHF announces shortlist of four CVD research projects competing for £30 million award

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) today announced its shortlist of four research projects competing for a single £30 million award.

23 Jan 2020

MGH surgeons perform first-of-its-kind heart transplant in New England

A team of surgeons and specialists at Massachusetts General Hospital is announcing an achievement in transplant surgery today, having recently performed the largest number of adult heart transplants in the country using what are known as Donation after Circulatory Death donor hearts.

11 Jan 2020

Heart transplants from hepatitis C–positive donors could help overcome organ shortage

One-year survival was similar for adults with severe heart failure who received a heart transplant from a donor with hepatitis C compared to those who received hearts from donors who did not have hepatitis C, according to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, the open access journal of the American Heart Association.

8 Jan 2020

New scientific statement outlines the resources needed to treat fulminant myocarditis

The resources needed to treat fulminant myocarditis - severe, inflammation of the heart that develops rapidly - are outlined in a new Scientific Statement from the American Heart Association on how best to reduce fatalities from this rare condition.

6 Jan 2020

Using hearts from hepatitis C-positive donors presents an opportunity to expand donor pool

Patients who were transplanted with hearts from hepatitis C-positive donors had comparable outcomes after one year to patients who received hearts from donors that didn't have the disease, according to a Vanderbilt University Medical Center study published in JAMA Cardiology.

22 Dec 2019

Doctors bring dead donor heart back to life in US first

A team has become the first in the US to reanimate the heart of a deceased donor and transplant it into a recipient.

3 Dec 2019

New collaboration aims to provide solutions for patients with hypoplastic left heart syndrome

Mayo Clinic's Todd and Karen Wanek Family Program for Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS) and Children's of Alabama announce their collaboration within a consortium to provide solutions for patients with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a rare and complex form of congenital heart disease in which the left side of the heart is severely underdeveloped.

25 Nov 2019

Analysis of new heart organ allocation system finds signal of decrease in survival rates

In an analysis of the new heart organ allocation system for transplant patients in the U.S., researchers have identified a signal of a decrease in heart transplant survival rates.

21 Nov 2019

REANIMA project may overturn paradigms that underlie regenerative cardiology research

Research into new endogenous mechanisms of tissue regeneration is an innovative research avenue in cardiac regeneration.

31 Oct 2019

Black, Latin people with heart failure less likely to receive specialized cardiology care

Nationally, heart failure patients who receive specialized cardiology care after admission tend to have better outcomes, including lower readmission rates and lower rates of death. But not all patients may have equal access to cardiology services.

29 Oct 2019

Study provides new insights on exercise limitations in patients with ventricular assist devices

Why don't patients with ventricular assist devices get better improvement in exercise tolerance? Increases in key internal heart pressures appear to be the answer, reports a study in the ASAIO Journal, official journal of ASAIO. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

1 Oct 2019

Research findings open the way for more heart donations

There is a risk of every fourth heart examined for possible donation being dismissed as unusable due to stress-induced heart failure.

26 Sep 2019

Study finds no overall improvement in heart transplant waitlist after policy change

In March 2016, the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network revised its criteria for prioritizing children awaiting heart transplantation in the U.S. with the intention of reducing the number of deaths on the waitlist, but a new study suggests unintended consequences.

23 Sep 2019

Opioid epidemic increases proportion of hearts transplanted from overdose death donors

The confluence of two major health crises—the opioid epidemic and organ shortage—has moved surgeons to consider transplanting organs deemed as less than "perfect" in an effort to expand the donor pool and save more lives, according to research published online today in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, published by Elsevier.

7 Jun 2019