NEW YORK:  A new review of data from the first 84 Covid-positive donor heart transplant patients in the US found that donor hearts from people who were Covid-positive appeared to be as safe for transplantation as those from people without the infection.

Patients who received a heart from a donor with the respiratory illness Covid spent an average of 17 days in the hospital, compared to 15 days for patients who received a heart from a donor without the infection.

According to study author Samuel T. Kim from the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, "these findings suggest that we may be able to be more aggressive about accepting donors that are positive for Covid-19 when patients are in dire need of an organ for heart transplantation."

Early next month, the findings will be presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2022. With a higher number of donors testing positive for Covid-19, which typically disqualifies the donors for transplantation, the pandemic made matters worse, said h author.

However, a number of academic centres have started using donor hearts that have tested positive for COVID and have reported positive outcomes recently. According to the data, both donor organ recipient groups experienced identical rates of death in the hospital and 30 days following transplantation, as well as issues like lung problems and graft failure, a disease when the body rejects the new organ.

Compared to the other recipients, recipients of organs from Covid-positive donors had organ rejection in 2.4% of cases. Almost 96.1% of recipients of hearts from Covid-19 positive donors survived the first 30 days, compared to 97% of recipients of hearts from Covid-19 negative donors.

None of the four patients who passed away after receiving a heart from a Covid-positive donor did so as a result of an infection or respiratory disease.  The researchers mentioned they were surprised by the findings.

In particular, Kim said, "we expected recipients getting donor hearts containing Covid-19 might have a difficulty with death from respiratory or lung-related reasons." But the researchers did not discover any such variations.

Eldrin F. Lewis, chair of the American Heart Association's Scientific Publishing Committee and a specialist in advanced heart failure and heart transplants, stated that the results show that 30-days after transplant, results were comparable among patients who received donor hearts that tested positive for the Covid-19 antigen. As such, the potential risks seem to be lower than anticipated.

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