Early Outcomes With Marginal Donor Hearts Compared With Left Ventricular Assist Device Support in Patients With Advanced Heart Failure

Background The shortage of donor hearts has limited cardiac transplantation for end-stage heart failure, leading to the increased use of left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) as bridge-to-transplant (BTT) and marginal donor hearts; however, outcomes have been mixed. This study examines differences in wait list survival of patients with continuous flow LVADs and post-transplantation survival of patients receiving a marginal donor heart. Methods The United Network of Organ Sharing database was retrospectively queried from January 2005 to June 2013 to identify adult patients listed for heart transplant. Marginal donor criteria included age greater than 55 years, hepatitis C positive, cocaine use, ejection fraction less than 0.45, or donor to recipient body mass index mismatch of greater than 20%. The primary endpoint was wait list survival of patients with LVADs compared with post-transplant survival of marginal donor heart recipients using Kaplan-Meier analysis. Results A total of 2,561 and 4,737 patients received LVAD support or a marginal donor heart, respectively. The 30-day, 1-year, and 2-year survival was 96%, 89%, and 85%, for patients with LVAD support on the waiting list and 97%, 89%, and 85%, respectively, for recipients of marginal donor hearts ( p = 0.213). Recipients of marginal hearts had worse survival than non-marginal heart recipients at 3 years ( p = 0.011). Conclusions There was no significant difference between waiting list survival of patients with LVAD support as BTT and post-transplant survival of recipients with marginal donor hearts. There could be clinical benefits for using LVAD support as BTT to allow time for better allocation of optimal donor hearts as opposed to transplantation with a marginal donor heart.