Spanish Heart Transplant Registry. 32nd Official Report of the Heart Failure Association of the Spanish Society of Cardiology

Abstract

Introduction and objectives: The present report updates the main characteristics and outcomes of heart transplants in Spain to 2020.

Methods: We describe the main features of recipients, donors, surgical procedure, and immunosuppression in 2020. We also analyze the temporal trends of these characteristics and outcomes (survival) for the period 2011 to 2019.

Results: In 2020, 278 heart transplants were performed (7.3% decrease vs 2019). The findings in 2020 confirmed previous observations of an increase in pretransplant sternotomy, a slight decrease in urgent transplants carried out with ventricular assist devices, a slight decrease in donor age, an increase in the use of allografts with previous arrest, and a decrease in ischemia time. Survival continued to improve in recent triennia, reaching 82.0% at 1 year in the period 2017 to 2019.

Conclusions: The slight decrease in the number of heart transplants performed in 2020 in Spain, most likely due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, did not change the main characteristics of the procedure. No change was observed in the tendency to improved survival.

Keywords: Heart transplant; Registro; Registry; Supervivencia; Survival; Trasplante cardiaco.