ARTICLE SUMMARY:
XVIVO is chipping away at the enormous unmet demand for heart transplants with hypothermic oxygenated perfusion preservation technology.
The supply of transplantable donor hearts is not close to meeting the demand of patients who need a new heart.
In the US alone, about 4,500 heart transplants are performed annually but more than 3,000 people are on the heart transplant waitlist at any given time, according to the US Health Resources and Services Administration. The development of ventricular assist devices over the last 20 years and the growth in the number of donors has dramatically improved the survival rate of people on the waitlist, but about one in five of those on the list die within five years and many more who need a new heart are never put on the list because they have so little chance of ever getting one. Meanwhile, only about one-third of hearts provided by brain-dead donors and about 20% of donation after circulatory death (DCD) hearts are transplanted.
