![Heart Transplants From Hepatitis C Donors Safe Heart Transplants From Hepatitis C Donors Safe](https://images.medindia.net/health-images/1200_1000/transplant-patients-live-longer-with-donor-hearts.jpg)
‘All patients survived one year after a heart transplant, regardless of whether they received a heart from a donor with or without hepatitis C. Specifically, 90% of patients whose donors had hepatitis C survived,’
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Hepatitis C is a viral infection of the liver that spreads through contact with contaminated blood. The infection is spread through use of shared needles, from mother to infant during pregnancy and delivery, or through an organ transplant from someone infected with hepatitis C. If left untreated, hepatitis C can damage the liver, however, with the recent advent of new, direct-acting, antiviral drugs, hepatitis C is much more manageable than it was in the past. Read More..
In many cases, hepatitis C is curable, which has led to increased use of organs from donors with hepatitis C as the need for heart transplants continues to exceed the supply.
In this study, nearly all patients survived one year after heart transplant, regardless of whether they received a heart from a donor with or without hepatitis C. Specifically, 90% of patients whose donors had hepatitis C survived, compared to a survival rate of 91% for the patients whose donors did not have the infection.
Similarly, the rates of drug-treated organ rejection, kidney dialysis to remove toxins from the blood and stroke were similar between the two groups of patients.
"We are encouraged by these results and believe this is a landmark change in our ability to better meet the demand for heart transplantation by increasing the donor supply," said Arman Kilic, M.D., lead study author, assistant professor of cardiothoracic surgery, director of surgery quality and analytics, and co-director of the Center for Cardiovascular Outcomes and Innovation at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pennsylvania. "It is our hope that more centers will use hepatitis C-positive donors for heart transplantation."
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Slightly more than 4% of patients, or 343, received heart transplants from donors with hepatitis C. Some limitations of the study are that the researchers did not have information about the donors’ type of hepatitis C infection, past treatment and whether the heart-transplant recipients later developed the infection. Also, this study examined one-year survival only and included a relatively small number of patients with heart transplants from donors with hepatitis C.
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Source-Eurekalert