A Reason to be Positive: Early Cardiac Allograft Vasculopathy and Acute Rejection in Recipients of HCV+ Donor Hearts

The increasing transplantation of hepatitis C virus (HCV) nucleic acid test (NAT) positive hearts in the contemporary era of direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapy has been a critical, practical approach to expanding the donor pool for life-saving heart transplantation (1). While short term graft and patient survival has been established to be non-inferior to that of recipients of HCV NAT- organs, historical data had suggested an increased risk of cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV) among recipients of organs from HCV seropositive donors (2-4).
Source: Journal of Cardiac Failure - Category: Cardiology Authors: Tags: Editorial Comment Source Type: research