Cardiac Transplantation Can Be Safely Performed With Low Donor-to-Recipient Body Weight Ratios

The International Thoracic Organ Transplant Registry of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation: Thirty-sixth adult heart transplantation report — 2019; focus theme: Donor and recipient size match

“…Given this persistent donor heart shortage, much attention has been paid to the topic of donor-recipient size matching. Prior studies have challenged traditional criteria for size matching, 1–3 while others have attempted to identify the optimal metric for matching donor and recipient heart size by comparing criteria, such as height, weight, body mass index (BMI), body surface area (BSA), and predicted heart mass (PHM). 4–7 This 36th annual adult heart transplant report is based on data submitted to the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) Thoracic Organ Transplant Registry on 146,975 heart transplants in recipients of all ages (including 131,249 adult heart transplants) through June 30, 2018.…”

The International Thoracic Organ Transplant Registry of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation: Twenty-second pediatric heart transplantation report – 2019; Focus theme: Donor and recipient size match

“…The ISHLT Registry Steering Committee selected donor-recipient size match as the theme topic for the 2019 annual report given recent interest in identifying the optimal metric for matching donor and recipient size and in studying the short-and long-term clinical consequences of size mismatch. Body weight has been the traditional metric for matching donor and recipient size [1][2][3] as suggested by the ISHLT guidelines, which state that "As a general rule, the use of hearts from donors whose body weight is no greater than 30% below that of the recipient is uniformly safe, though greater size mismatches have been successfully used in pediatric heart transplantation." 4,5 Some transplant centers, however, prefer using height as a metric to match donor and recipient size, 6,7 whereas body mass index and body surface area have been suggested as other suitable measures.…”

Comparing open gastrostomy tube to percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube in heart transplant patients

“…Heart transplantation is the gold standard treatment for patients with end stage heart failure (HF) refractory to medical management [1] . While many studies have focused on increasing the donor pool for heart transplant recipients [2] , [3] , [4] , [5] , [6] , [7] , few studies have focused on maximizing survival and quality of life in these patients. Occasionally, heart transplant recipients may require long term enteral access because they are not capable of eating and/or not meeting their nutritional demands.…”