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J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2005;130:187-193
© 2005 The American Association for Thoracic Surgery

Cardiothoracic Transplantation

Does duration of donor brain injury affect outcome after orthotopic pediatric heart transplantation?

Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, Calif.

Read at the Eighty-fourth Annual Meeting of The American Association for Thoracic Surgery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, April 25–28, 2004.

Received for publication May 3, 2004; revisions received January 17, 2005; accepted for publication February 7, 2005.

^_* Address for reprints: Jonah Odim, MD, PhD, Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, David Geffen School of Medicine, 10833 Le Conte Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1741. (Email: jodim{at}mednet.ucla.edu).

OBJECTIVE: We tested the hypothesis that duration of donor brain injury and death would have an adverse effect on recipient rejection and mortality in pediatric heart transplantation.

METHODS: Ninety-three cardiac transplants were performed at our center from July 1, 1997, through June 30, 2003. The primary study end points were the number of rejection episodes and the time to first rejection. Secondary outcomes were early and late mortality.

RESULTS: Among 88 recipients of 93 cardiac allografts, 5 (6%) and 1 (1%) received second and third allografts, respectively. Overall patient mortality (3 early and 2 late) was 6% (5/88), and overall graft loss was 6% (6/93). Median time from donor brain injury to declaration of brain death (brain injury interval), time from brain death to donor cardiectomy (brain death interval), and graft ischemia time were 38, 24, and 3.3 hours, respectively. Cox regression analysis (adjusting for United Network for Organ Sharing status, ventilator dependence, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and ventricular-assist device status, diagnosis of congenital heart disease, sex and cytomegalovirus mismatches, and type of immunosuppression) demonstrated that recipients of donor hearts with relatively long periods from brain injury to death declaration or from death to organ removal had significantly improved rejection-free survival (hazard ratios 0.3, P = .01, and 0.5, P = .05, for brain injury and brain death times, respectively). Prolonged donor heart ischemia did not impact rejection rate. Increasing brain injury interval, brain death interval, and graft ischemia time had no significant effect on mortality.

CONCLUSION: Longer brain injury and death intervals correlated with improved freedom from rejection but had no effect on mortality.

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