A new data monitoring report contains key measures of the adult heart allocation system. The data indicates that adult heart transplants continue to increase following implementation of the updated allocation system, which was implemented October 18, 2018.
The report notes several important trends since implementation including:
- Overall median time spent waiting before a transplant decreased by 74 percent (from 263 days to 69 days) in the post-policy era
- Overall number of transplants increased by 16 percent (from 10, 772 transplants to 12, 864 transplants) in the post-policy era
- Overall post-transplant patient survival was not impacted (85.6 percent three-year survival pre-policy era vs 85.3 percent three-year survival post-policy era)
This implementation involved creating new adult heart medical urgency statuses (transitioned from a three-status system to a six-status system) and altering how organs were shared based on medical urgency and distance from the donor hospital. These changes were made to better stratify the most medically urgent heart transplant candidates, reflect the increased use of mechanical circulatory support devices (MCSD) and prevalence of MCSD complications, and address geographic disparities in access to donors. For more details, see the policy notice.
The OPTN Heart Transplantation Committee reviewed this report at their March 29 meeting and will continue to monitor adult heart allocation as data is submitted. Subsequent monitoring reports will be published on the OPTN website on an ongoing basis. Additional heart monitoring reports are available here.
