The Transmedics Organ Care System supplies oxygen and essential nutrients to the heart and other organs as they are being transported from one location to the next. Credit: Courtesy of Dr. Nahush Mokadam
Some say that love never dies, which may be true now that donated hearts have a chance to last longer before reaching their recipient.
Heart surgeons at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center are using the Transmedics Organ Care System, which supplies oxygen and essential nutrients to the heart and other organs as they are being transported from one location to the next, Dr. Nahush Mokadam, director of the Division of Cardiac Surgery at the medical center, said.
“If we put the heart on this device, maybe this heart, given another six or eight hours, might look better — and then we would use it for transplant,” Mokadam said. “That might open the door for new donors and a higher likelihood of an individual patient getting transplanted.”
The medical center is the first in central Ohio to use the new system on a trial basis, Dr. Asvin Ganapathi, assistant professor of cardiac surgery at the College of Medicine and lead investigator in the clinical trial, said. One patient at the medical center has received the transplant thus far, Mokadam said.
Patients participate in the current trial on a voluntary basis, and the system has undergone extensive clinical trials to earn approval from the Food and Drug Administration, Mokadam said. Donations can come from individuals thousands of miles away.
Ganapathi said the clinical trial focused more on hearts that would not otherwise be considered for a transplant rather than hearts that are typically viable.
Hearts from those who had conditions associated with alcohol, drugs, smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes and more lessens the organ’s likelihood of approval to be donated for a transplant, Ganapathi said.
“Heart disease is one of the most significant disease burdens on the United States and worldwide, and it’s one of the leading killers of people,” Ganapathi said. “Unfortunately for us, there’s only a limited number of hearts that are usable.”
Ganapathi added the idea of the system was to give people access to those overlooked or unused hearts.
“[The Transmedic Organ Care System] allows us to look at the heart and see how it’s functioning,” Ganapathi said. “If there are any concerns about the function, it allows us to assess it before we put it into a recipient.”
To determine if a heart is usable, surgeons examine it using a series of tests — such as examining its ability to beat properly and testing for coronary artery disease, disease of the blood vessels, high blood pressure and other similar conditions, Mokadam said. If the surgeon decides to transplant the heart, the system will be used to monitor the heart both visually and by providing surgeons with vital data.
The care system will increase heart transplants due to its ability to be stored and evaluated by surgeons, Mokadam said.
“One of the things this system allows us to do is to evaluate the heart over time to see, ‘Is the heart getting better or worse?’ And it gives us a little bit more time to make a decision about proceeding with the transplant,” Mokadam said.
