A new way to rank Americans waiting for donor hearts did a better job of putting the sickest patients first than the current system, according to a study published in JAMA. Researchers from the University of Chicago and the federal Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients developed a lab-based urgency score and tested it in a simulation of how 45,530 donor hearts would have been allocated. The score is not national policy, and any lives it might save remain projections.
For families, the stakes are stark. One in five people on the U.S. heart transplant waiting list dies or is removed before receiving a transplant, according to UChicago Medicine. A system that ranks patients by how sick they are, rather than by the treatments they receive, could change who is offered the next available heart.
