Marginal donor grafts in heart transplantation: lessons learned from 25 years of experience

Transcatheter aortic valve implantation in a young heart transplant recipient crossing the traditional boundaries

“…As a consequence of world-wide heart donor short-ages and increased demand, marginal donors are often accepted especially in patients with an urgent call for HTx. In accord with the present case, marginal organs may increasingly be accepted because of the significant shortage of donor hearts (3,9). The marginal donor is often characterized with higher age and comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, left ventricular hypertrophy and even mild valvular heart disease.…”

Ventricular Assist Devices in Children

“…Current strategies to increase the donor pool, including the use of marginal donors 28 and desensitization with an HLAincompatible donor, 28 may be increasing the risk of posttransplantation graft failure.…”

Diazoxide supplemented Celsior solution improves hypothermic heart preservation effect in rat through activation of mitochondrial ATP-sensitive potassium channel

“…But the major obstacle confronting clinical surgeons is the lack of a dependable organ preservation method which can preserve the donor heart as long as possible while the heart is still recovering to a clinically satisfactory extent after transplantation (Sadala & Stolf, 2008). Unfortunately, the hypothermia preservation method in practice can only preserve the donor time in a range of about 4 h (Wittwer & Wahlers, 2008), and as the preservation time increases from 2 to 4 h, the death rate also increases from 9.8 to 17.6%. Recent research indicates that myocardium ischemia-reperfusion injury is the major reason responsible for the high incidence of complications and the high mortality rate after heart transplantation, and, thus, reducing ischemia-reperfusion injury has become the primary concern for research on heart preservation.…”