Contemporary strategies for donor heart preservation in heart transplantation

Heart transplantation outcomes have tremendously improved over the nearly fifty years that the procedure has been performed. As demand continues to grow, there is a persistent shortage of organs. Compounding this is the potential for organs to deteriorate with increasing preservation and transport times. New technologies have been developed to address these issues. These include novel physiologic preservation solutions and preservation devices (which range from those that optimize temperature control to those that use machine perfusion or combinations of these facets) to minimize the risk of ischemic injury. Research is ongoing into these techniques and their potential to improve outcomes by protecting donor organs (particularly in cases of prolonged ischemic times) and expand the donor pool by better preserving grafts from marginal and/or donation after circulatory death donors. There is even research into utilizing these technologies to enable safe cardiac xenograft implantation as well as their role in beating heart transplantation.