A team of researchers from John Hopkins believes they have created a new way to know how successful transplants will be.
More than 3,000 people are on the waiting list for a heart transplant in the United States, and only about 2,000 transplants are performed each year. This new information could help doctors figure out the best candidates for the limited amount of organs.
How the new system works:
The researchers pulled together a list of risk factors that are associated with poor outcomes such as: age, race, gender, and weight, which is a growing problem. All of these risks were put on a point scale and applied to each patient’s medical history. The lower the score the more likely the patient is to accept the organ, the higher the score the more likely the organ will be rejected.
“Donor hearts are a limited resource,” says John V. Conte, M.D., a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the senior author of the study. “Now, we have a simple-to-use tool that is highly predictive of survival after a heart transplant, and can help guide organ allocation decisions.”
Details of the study:
Once the score sheets were created, researchers applied this new system to 21,000 medical records provided by the United Network of Organ Sharing.
Patients with scores between zero and two had a 92 percent chance of survival. Those with score above 20 points had a less than 50 percent chance of survival one year after surgery. Every point on the scale increased the chance of death within one year by 14 percent.
Future of grading system:
While medical technology has come a long way in the cardiac department, including recruiting patients for studies, more studies are still needed. Still, researchers believe this system could help doctors better access a patient’s viability for transplants.
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