Australia - Discovery extends life of donor hearts

Citation

(2010), "Australia - Discovery extends life of donor hearts", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 23 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijhcqa.2010.06223bab.005

Australia - Discovery extends life of donor hearts

Article Type: News and views From: International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Volume 23, Issue 2

Keywords: Organ donations, Transplants, Clinical trials, Healthcare improvement

Scientists at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Centre in Sydney have developed a groundbreaking “cocktail of drugs” that could double the life of donor hearts being transported for transplant surgery.

Donor hearts can be stored in the new solution for up to 14 hours – more than twice the current four-hour limit.

The director of the institute, Professor Bob Graham, says it offers hope to hundreds of Australians who miss out on heart transplants each year.

“Australia is a big continent and at the moment we can’t take an organ say from northern Queensland to some recipient that’s in Perth because the heart wouldn’t survive”, he said.

“But now we should be able to take the heart from anywhere in Australia, to anywhere in Australasia – both Australia and New Zealand”.

Professor Graham says researchers looked at what causes a heart to deteriorate and found that drugs which block that process are already available.

“It’s a combination of drugs that both dilate the blood vessels and also which block certain little channels in the heart which are inactivated when the heart gets taken out”.

“When we take an organ out of a donor, it’s deprived of oxygen and nutrients, so we have to tell it to sort of go into hibernation if you like, and to slow down and not to die, but just to slow down its metabolism.

“That’s what this treatment is aimed at, getting the heart to be good at doing that, but it’s to go into hibernation if you like rather than going on to deteriorate”.

Professor Graham says the discovery has the potential to save hundreds of lives.

“At the moment we only are able to use about 40 per cent of potential donor hearts, but we’re able to say get 90 per cent of kidneys”.

“We’re doing about 250 heart transplants a year, so if we can increase that even by 100 to 120, that will be enormously helpful because we have many people waiting for a transplant who never get one”.

He says trials on rats have been promising and he is confident clinical trials on humans will be successful.

“I think I’d be extremely confident because the same mechanisms apply in rodents even though we may think we’re a lot better than rodents”.

“We have to first go to a large organ which will be from a pig which is very similar to the human heart, so once we’ve done that I’ll be even more confident”.

For more information: www.abc.net.au