Strategies to increase heart transplantation in centre-sud transplant organization.

The 21 heart transplantations in Centre-Sud Transplant Organization (OCST) is a stable number despite increasing donations, especially among subjects aged 50 to 60 years. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the possibility to increase the usage of marginal hearts through dipyridamole ecostress. From 2008 to 2010 we analyzed OCST donors at 74 donation sites for echocardiography (31 yes versus 43 no) and heart utilization: (1) principal sites (n > 13) versus (2) minor sites (n < 13). Among 2145 signaled donors, there were 900 (42%) effective donors, including 816 (38%) utilized organs from 387 subjects of age <50 years; 189, 50 to 60 years and 240, >60 years with 217 (90%); 24 (10%), and 3 (1%) utilized hearts respectively to the analyzed sites, the utilized donors with echocardiography were 373: 259 (69.4%) versus 114 (30.5%) from those without such a service. Utilized donors between 50 and 60 years came from principal sites (n = 50), minor sites (n = 7) or those without an echocardiagram (n = 16). Utilized heart donors in each type of site were eight, one, and six, respectively. We believe that it may be possible to increase the total number of heart transplantations using dipyridamole stress-test echocardiography at the sites with major retrieval activity to increase heart transplantation among donors in the age range of 50 to 60 years. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.