What to Know
- The world's first HIV-positive to HIV-positive heart transplant was performed in the Bronx.
- Montefiore Health System said that the transplant was a success and involved a patient in her sixties who suffered from advanced heart failure.
- It wasn't until 2013, that the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act allowed for individuals living with HIV to donate their organs to an HIV-positive recipient. However, it has taken nearly a decade for a heart transplant of this kind.
The world's first HIV-positive to HIV-positive heart transplant was performed in the Bronx.
Montefiore Health System said that the transplant was a success and involved a patient in her sixties who suffered from advanced heart failure.
Not only did the patient receive the heart transplant, but she simultaneously received a kidney transplant in early spring, according to the hospital.
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Following a five-weeks recuperation period, the patient now sees her physicians for monitoring, according to the hospital.
It wasn't until 2013, that the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act allowed for individuals living with HIV to donate their organs to an HIV-positive recipient. However, it has taken nearly a decade for a heart transplant of this kind.
"Thanks to significant medical advances, people living with HIV are able to control the disease so well that they can now save the lives of other people living with this condition," said Dr. Ulrich P. Jorde, Section Head - Heart Failure, Cardiac Transplantation & Mechanical Circulatory Support, and Vice Chief, Division of Cardiology at Montefiore and Professor of Medicine at Einstein.
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"This surgery is a milestone in the history of organ donation and offers new hope to people who once had nowhere to turn," Jorde said.
Montefiore is one of 25 centers in the country that is eligible to offer this type of surgery since it has met certain criteria and outcomes set forth by Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.
In the United States alone, there are between 60,000 and 100,000 people who need a new heart. However, just last year, only around 3,800 transplants were performed.
"This was a complicated case and a true multidisciplinary effort by cardiology, surgery, nephrology, infectious disease, critical care and immunology," said the patient's cardiologist, Dr. Omar Saeed, who is also an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Einstein. "Making this option available to people living with HIV expands the pool of donors and means more people, with or without HIV, will have quicker access to a lifesaving organ."
