Eliminating Blood Test may increase availability of Donor Hearts

American Heart Association Rapid Access Journal Report

Dallas, TX – A blood test that leads to the rejection of donor hearts may be unnecessary in predicting whether a heart transplant will succeed or fail, according to new research in Circulation: Heart Failure, an American Heart Association journal.

“Heart transplantation is an incredible therapy for patients with end-stage heart failure, but there are only 2,000-2,400 transplants each year. A lot of focus has been on finding ways to sign up more people as organ donors, but there is also a problem in that only an average of one in three donor hearts are placed,” said Snehal R. Patel, M.D., senior author of the study and assistant professor of medicine at Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in the Bronx, New York.

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