By Elaine Chen – Stat News
A new method of heart transplantation that uses machines to reanimate donor hearts from people who have died is just as good as traditional heart transplantation, a new study finds. If adopted broadly in the U.S., the procedure that could expand the donor pool by 30%.
The adjusted six-month survival rate of patients undergoing the new method was 94%, compared with 91% among patients who underwent the traditional method, according to the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine Wednesday, the first large randomized study comparing the two procedures.
At one year, the survival rate was 93% for patients who got the reanimated hearts, versus 85% for those who got hearts under the traditional procedure, according to the study, which was funded by TransMedics, the company that makes the heart machine.