Why the study?
Preoperative sensitization in cardiac transplant recipients presents major management challenges by prolonging wait times and increasing postoperative complications and death, necessitating candidate identification and optimization.
This review highlights the risks, diagnostic methods, and new therapeutic options for managing sensitized cardiac transplant candidates to optimize outcomes.
Informs risk assessment for sensitized cardiac transplant candidates; leaves open prospective validation of new therapies.
Preoperative sensitization of the cardiac transplant recipient, defined as the presence of anti-Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) antibodies before transplant, represents a significant management challenge for physicians. Sensitization prolongs the pre-transplant wait time and is associated with postoperative transplant complications and death. It is critical that sensitized heart transplant candidates be identified and optimized before surgery. In this review, we describe the risk for sensitization, discuss the means through which sensitization may be diagnosed, and highlight some of the new therapeutic options for managing the sensitized cardiac transplant patients.
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Mazzei et al. (2021) studied this question.
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