The dawn of rejecting rejection?
Englishman John McCafferty holds the record as the world's longest surviving heart transplant patient. At the time of his surgery in the fall of 1982, physicians estimated he’d live five years. He lived another 30 on top of that—working, enjoying family, running half marathons, traveling, fundraising for a transplant support charity and trout fishing—before passing away just last summer.
Across the globe, some 100,000 people have received heart transplants. In the U.S., there are no numbers on the heart transplant recipients who has survived 20 years or more because data collection began in 1987 by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the nonprofit that matches available organs with recipients. But UNOS estimates about one in six heart recipients transplanted before 1994 have survived 20 years or longer. The U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood institute estimates the 10-year survival rate for heart transplant surgery is about 56 percent.
Those numbers could grow some day soon if a new technique to reduce donor heart rejection by desensitizing antibodies is successful. Presented in France in May, also coinciding with the 50th anniversary of heart transplantation, the method was developed at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris.
The hospital began a program in 2009 to test how effective it was in reducing the chance of heart transplantation rejection. They tracked 500 patients from 2009 to 2015. The type of desensitization patients received depended on their donor-specific anti-human leukocyte antigen (HLA) antibody (DSA) levels. Desensitizing the antibodies allowed patients with a high immunological risk experience to have similar survival rates to patients without DSA. Put simply, “desensitization could shorten waiting times and increase access to transplantation for patients at high immunological risk,” the researchers wrote. “However, it will probably not increase the number of transplantations since donor shortage is the limiting factor."
Check out more details in the story and please remember there are more than 121,000 people in the U.S. awaiting organ transplants, and many thousands in need of tissue and corneal transplants. Register to be an organ, tissue or eye donor next time you renew your driver’s license or by logging onto www.donatelife.net.
Mary joined TriMed Media in 2003. She was the founding editor and editorial director of Health Imaging, Cardiovascular Business, Molecular Imaging Insight and CMIO, now known as Clinical Innovation + Technology. Prior to TriMed, Mary was the editorial director of HealthTech Publishing Company, where she had worked since 1991. While there, she oversaw four magazines and related online media, and piloted the launch of two magazines and websites. Mary holds a master’s in journalism from Syracuse University. She lives in East Greenwich, R.I., and when not working, she is usually running around after her family, taking photos or cooking.