Heart transplants - does ABO compatibility matter?

The Archivist has been involved with a number of children who have been waiting for an organ transplant. Once accepted onto a transplant list, the waiting and apprehension can be unbearable for the patient and family. It is clear that there have been many efforts to increase the awareness of organ donation in the public. There have been other efforts to increase the potential donor pool by liberalising donor acceptance criteria, using heavier grafts and grafts from adults, and grafts with marginal physiological function. Urshel S et al. [Lancet Child and Adolescent DOI:https://ift.tt/2SJfBEY(21)00023-7] have examined ABO-incompatible heart transplantation as a way to increases donor availability. They have reported the long-term outcomes in young children after they received ABO-incompatible or ABO-compatible heart transplantation. This was a multicentre (Canada, USA and UK), prospective cohort study, using data from data from the Paediatric Heart Transplant Society registry to compare children...

from Archives of Disease in Childhood current issue https://ift.tt/3tDLrVn