Sept. 18 (UPI) — Accepting hearts from older donors and those with some chronic health conditions allowed surgeons at Yale New Haven Hospital to perform more transplants and reduce the time recipients spent on the waiting list, without negatively impacting safety and health, an analysis published Friday by JAMA Network Open found.
With the changes, the hospital was able to more than quadruple the number of heart transplants it performed and cut the average time recipients were on the waiting list by nearly 200 days, the researchers said.
The findings suggest that a more “inclusive” approach to selecting donor hearts and transplant recipients can enable hospitals to successfully treat more patients who need transplants, they said.
Views: