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©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Transplant. Dec 18, 2025; 15(4): 105974
Published online Dec 18, 2025. doi: 10.5500/wjt.v15.i4.105974
Published online Dec 18, 2025. doi: 10.5500/wjt.v15.i4.105974
Increased mortality when combining older donors and recipients in heart transplantation
Martin Geard Walsh, Divyaam Satija, Doug A Gouchoe, Matthew C Henn, Bryan A Whitson, Kukbin Choi, Department of Surgery, Division of Cardiac Surgery, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH 43201, United States
Ervin Y Cui, COPPER Laboratory, Department of Surgery, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH 43201, United States
Asvin M Ganapathi, Division of Cardiac Surgery, Los Robles Regional Medical Center, Thousand Oaks, CA 91360, United States
Co-corresponding authors: Martin Geard Walsh and Kukbin Choi.
Author contributions: Walsh MG and Choi K wrote original manuscript, played important and indispensable roles in the experimental design, data interpretation and manuscript preparation as the co-corresponding authors; Walsh MG and Cui EY collected and performed formal analysis of data; Choi K, Ganapathi AM and Whitson BA determined; experimental design and rigor; Walsh MG, Satija D, Gouchoe DA, Henn MC, Ganapathi AM, Whitson BA, and Choi K validated results; all authors edited manuscript and approved of the final version of the manuscript.
Supported by The Jewel and Frank Benson Family Endowment.
Institutional review board statement: The study was deemed exempt from institutional review board (IRB: 2018H0079; approved 2/20/2018; last renewed 2/9/2024).
Informed consent statement: Given the retrospective nature of the OPTN-STAR datafile, informed consent was not applicable.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: The data used in this study are derived from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network’s Standard Transplant Analysis and Research (OPTN-STAR) files. These data are not publicly available due to data use agreements and privacy regulations but may be obtained by qualified researchers through application to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). The authors do not have permission to share the dataset. Requests for access to the data may be directed to the Health Resources and Services Administration or UNOS viahttps://optn.transplant.hrsa.gov/data/request-data/.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Kukbin Choi, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery, Division of Cardiac Surgery, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, N-825 Doan Hall, 410 W. 10th Ave, Columbus, OH 43201, United States. kukbin.choi@osumc.edu
Received: February 12, 2025
Revised: April 17, 2025
Accepted: July 17, 2025
Published online: December 18, 2025
Processing time: 280 Days and 9.9 Hours
Revised: April 17, 2025
Accepted: July 17, 2025
Published online: December 18, 2025
Processing time: 280 Days and 9.9 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Our study investigates the impact of donor and recipient age on heart transplant outcomes. We report higher mortality when older donors (> 55 years) are combined with older recipients (> 60 years) especially in the early post-operative period. Despite the increased early risk, these donors remain crucial given the organ shortage. This work highlights the need for refined selection criteria and tailored management strategies.