(62) Heart Transplantation (ht) from Active and Recently Active Covid19 Donors

HT centers may avoid donors with Covid19 (Cov19) infection due to uncertain risk of virus transmission and possibility of virus mediated myocardial injury. We investigated Cov19 donor utilization, transplant characteristics and early post HT outcomes in the U.S. Between May 2020-June 2022, n=27,862 donors in UNOS had data available on Cov19 NAT tests and organ disposition. Since donors may get Cov19 testing multiple times prior to organ retrieval, additional data on multiple Cov19 NAT was requested and analyzed. Donors were classified Cov19-donors if NAT+ at any time during terminal hospitalization, and subclassified as Active Cov19(A-Cov19) if NAT+ at organ procurement and ‘Recently Active Cov19’(rA-Cov19) if NAT+ initially but NAT negative prior to organ retrieval. HT outcomes using Cov19 and nonCov19 donors were compared by Kaplan Meier (KM) and Cox hazards ratio (HR). Prior to organ retrieval, 27,862 donors had 60,699 Cov19 NAT tests done. Of these, n=1445 were Cov19 donors, n=125 indeterminate and n=26,292 nonCov19. Of Cov19 donors, n=1017 were A-Cov19 and n=428 rA-Cov19. 309 HTs used hearts from Cov19 donors and 239 (n=150 A-Cov19, n=89 rA-Cov19) met study criteria. Compared to nonCov19, Cov19 donors used for adult HT were younger [30(23-37) vs 32(25-40)yrs] and mostly male (80.3% vs 72.1%), p