SAN FRANCISCO — Patients over the age of 70 do almost as well after heart transplants as younger recipients, unless they are infected with hepatitis C, according to a poster presentation by Dr. Jignesh K. Patel at the American Transplant Congress.
In a retrospective analysis, Dr. Patel and colleagues from the University of California, Los Angeles, compared 25 heart recipients aged 70-75 years (mean of 72 years) with 246 younger patients (mean of 56 years).
There were no differences between the groups in early cardiac allograft vasculopathy or in the percentage of patients being treated for rejection during the first year.
The younger patients did have a significantly higher 5-year survival rate than did the older patients–80% vs. 64%. However, when the investigators excluded from the analysis all patients with hepatitis C at the time of transplant and those receiving organs from hepatitis C-positive donors, the difference in 5-year survival failed to reach statistical significance. Three of the nine patients who died in the older age group had hepatitis C prior to transplantation.
Since all the older patients were classified as status 2, indicating relatively low-risk patients who did not require intravenous medications, the investigators selected only status 2 recipients for the control group.