The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) has approved a new organ distribution system for patients awaiting heart transplants.
Scheduled to go into effect later this year, the system establishes 3 medical urgency status levels that evaluate prospective transplant patients more objectively. The most urgent level, status 1A, includes critically ill patients who require continuous inotropic drug therapy or mechanical assistance and have a life expectancy of less than a month without a transplant.
The new system also creates 11 regional thoracic organ review boards that will review status 1A patients to ensure that they have been listed in the correct status level. Under the new distribution policy, pediatric patients will have priority over adults to receive hearts retrieved from adolescent donors. Data indicate that age matching is more important to pediatric patients' survival than it is to that of adults, a UNOS spokesman said.
