Aim – Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA) could be an alternative to existing efforts towards increasing the available pool of organs. The objective of this work is to demonstrate how hearts derived from marginal donors with Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA) have a quality that is not inferior in terms of survival compared to hearts originating from standard patients.
Methods – We performed a retrospective analysis in patients who received donor heart transplants with cardiac arrest of 20 minutes or more. The average time to cardiac arrest was 21 (±8.76) minutes. From January 2022 to September 2023, 70 cardiac transplants were performed at our cardiac surgery center, of which 74.24% were men (n=52) and 25.76 % women (n=18). The two populations compared showed similar characteristics in terms of risk factors, age, urgency/emergency status, ecmo before HTx.
Results – Patients who received hearts from donors with OHCA were 12,86% (n=9). Kaplan Meier survival curve show Kaplan Meier survival curve shows comparable 30-day survival in the two groups with a non-significant statistical difference (p = 0,5). In the group considered there is no significant difference in the use of post-operative VA ECMO (Group uDCD 22% post-HTx ECMO-VA, Group Control 23% post HTx ECMO-VA, p= 0,98)
Conclusion – According to these results it is possible to appreciate how OHCA hearts do not show inferior survival compared to hearts derived from patients who died from cerebral hemorrhage or other causes. Longer-term follow-up is necessary to evaluate the survival of such recipients.
