Original Clinical ScienceFunctional assessment and transplantation of the donor heart after circulatory death
Section snippets
Methods
The research protocol was approved by the UK Donation Ethics Committee (UKDEC), Local Regional Ethics Committee (05/Q0104/111), and National Health Service Blood and Transplant (NHSBT), the responsible body for transplantation within the UK. The protocol was confined to Maastricht 3 DCD donors in 3 hospitals within the East of England between April 2014 and July 2015.14
A specialist nurse in organ donation obtained research consent from the donor’s next of kin. The decision to withdraw
Results
Seventeen potential DCD donors were attended, 8 during the feasibility phase and 9 during the clinical program. During the feasibility phase, 3 of the potential 8 donors did not arrest within 2 hours and 1 was excluded due to incomplete documentation. Most of the donors in the feasibility (Table 1) and clinical phases (Table 2) were young adults, with a median age of 33 years (interquartile range [IQR], 28–38 years). Traumatic brain injury was the leading cause of death. Vasoconstrictor support
Discussion
Despite almost half a century passing since the world’s first successful human heart transplant, also from a DCD donor, and an overwhelming body of large-animal evidence demonstrating viability,15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 there still remains uncertainty surrounding the safety of DCD heart transplantation. Quantifying the injury that the heart has sustained during the agonal phase after WLST and the warm ischemic period after circulatory arrest has not been possible until now. Although other centers
Disclosure statement
None of the authors has a financial relationship with a commercial entity that has an interest in the subject of the presented manuscript or other conflicts of interest to disclose.
This research study was funded by the European Society of Organ Transplantation, The Freemasons’ Grand Charity, The Masonic Samaritan Fund, Papworth Hospital Charity Fund, the Evelyn Trust, and the Gledhill Fellowship. The funding organizations did not have any role in the collection of data, its analysis,
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