Short- and intermediate-term implications of using older donors for heart transplantation

The effect of donor age on posttransplant mortality in a cohort of adult cardiac transplant recipients aged 18-45

“…The magnitude of the effect is approximately 2.5 years, with the median posttransplant survival for those patients receiving a younger donor being 15.2 years compared to 12.6 years in those receiving an older donor. These findings are consistent with prior multicenter studies which demonstrated an association between increased donor age and posttransplant mortality . We note that there are significant differences in the baseline characteristics between recipients who received an older donor compared to those who received a younger donor in our population.…”

Increased plasma interleukin-6 in donors is associated with lower recipient hospital-free survival after cadaveric organ transplantation*

“…As age is an independent predictor of outcomes from many forms of critical illness, it is expected that increasing age is associated with lower organ yield. These data are also consistent with the finding from other studies that transplantation from older donors is associated with decreased recipient survival (14,15). Interestingly, among donors aged Յ50, age was not a determinant of organ yield, while female gender was associated with lower number of organs transplanted.…”

Effect of Donor Age on Long-Term Survival Following Cardiac Transplantation

“…This review finds advanced donor age to be predictive of negative outcome in heart transplant recipients, a trend that has been observed by many other researchers including those from the ISHLT. Pierson et al 3 stratified data at different age limits from the ISHLT registry of 8925 patients. He found that older organs are associated with increased mortality at both early and intermediate follow‐up.…”

“…In order to increase the number of available donor organs, procurement criteria have been recently expanded to include the use of older donor hearts. Several studies, 1‐4 including those performed by the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT), 5 have shown that use of older donor organs results in adverse events following transplantation. Other investigators have not found the same results 6‐10 .…”