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The use of ex vivo heart perfusion to preserve the donor heart in a warm beating state during transport is in its infancy and not ready for clinical practice. In a prospective, open-label, international, randomized, noninferiority trial at 10 heart-transplant centers, researchers randomized 130 eligible heart-transplant candidates (age, >18 years) to receive donor hearts preserved with either a portable system for ex vivo heart perfusion or standard cold storage. The study was sponsored by the manufacturer of the perfusion system.
The primary endpoint of 30-day patient and graft survival was not significantly different in the perfusion-system group (94%) and the standard cold-storage group (97%). Rates of cardiac-related serious adverse even…