Utility of echocardiographic evaluation of donor hearts upon the organ procurement for heart transplantation.
BACKGROUND
Evaluating donor heart as accurately as possible upon the organ procurement would help lead careful post-transplant heart management. Our institution (National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center, Osaka, Japan) has sent a transplant cardiologist upon the organ procurement for evaluating a donor heart ever since our first case of heart transplantation.


METHODS
Thirteen consecutive bedside echocardiograms obtained from donors upon the organ procurement and post-transplant echocardiograms obtained from their recipients were retrospectively reviewed. The impact of donor echocardiograms on their recipients' post-transplant time course was analyzed and both the donor echocardiographic parameters and their recipients' parameters within 1 week after the heart transplant were compared.


RESULTS
Both the left ventricular end-diastolic diameter and the ventricular wall thickness of donors correlated well with those parameters of their corresponding recipients (r(2)=0.740, p<0.0001, r(2)=0.704, p<0.0001, respectively). The information on coronary flow of the donor heart with risk factors for ischemic heart disease was useful for judging the availability for heart transplantation. The information on the pre-existing localized wall motion abnormality of donor hearts was useful for ruling out a possibility of rejection and other causes of wall motion abnormality after transplantation. The mean time required for bedside echocardiography for the donor heart was only 3.7 min. None of the recipients either developed primary graft failure or required treatment for cellular rejection.


CONCLUSIONS
Detailed observation of donor hearts by bedside echocardiograms upon the organ procurement is of clinical benefit.
Department of Clinical Physiology, National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center, Osaka, Japan.
Shuji
S
Hashimoto
Tomoko S
TS
Kato
Kazuo
K
Komamura
Akihisa
A
Hanatani
Kazuo
K
Niwaya
Toshihiro
T
Funatsu
Junjiro
J
Kobayashi
Yoshiyuki
Y
Sumita
Norio
N
Tanaka
Kazuhiko
K
Hashimura
Masanori
M
Asakura
Hideaki
H
Kanzaki
Masafumi
M
Kitakaze
D000328:Adult; D004452:Echocardiography; D005260:Female; D016027:Heart Transplantation; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013997:Time Factors; D014019:Tissue Donors; D009927:Tissue and Organ Procurement / Q000379:methods*; D016896:Treatment Outcome