Right now, as many as 4,000 people in the United States are waiting for a heart or heart and lung transplant, and more than 25% will die before they get a donor organ.
Some of the top transplantation programs in the country are now addressing the shortage by accepting hearts from donors who had active hepatitis C.
Recipients know they’ll get the disease, but in Healthy Living Courtney Hunter explains how, so far, they’ve all been cured.
Dr. Reyes says his team is looking at expanding the program to include kidneys from Hep C-infected donors, but he wants more study done first.
In an initial study, 20 patients at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia were cured of Hep C after kidney transplants from infected donors.
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