JHLT The Podcast - Heart Transplantation in Patients with Socioeconomically Distressed Communities

The February episode of JHLT: The Podcast features a study that might be of interest to listeners treating heart failure patients or who are interested in managing diverse patient populations.

Kevin-Chen-Headshot_100px_2728437.pngIn the second segment of the episode, the Digital Media Editors speak to first author Kevin Chen, MD, on the study “Heart transplantation in patients from socioeconomically distressed communities.”

After querying the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients between 2005 and 2020, the authors included about 36,000 heart transplant recipients and 49,000 waitlisted candidates. The community-level distress of these patients was determined using the Distressed Community Index (DCI). They found that patients from distressed communities fell into clear demographic categories, with higher comorbidities before transplant and an increased risk of mortality among both patients on the waitlist (13% higher) and patients after transplant (22% higher).

In the episode, Dr. Chen discusses the possible reasons behind these disparities, race and gender-specific disparities, and what the transplant community can do to reduce these disparities.

In the first segment, you’ll hear about the paper “Perioperative extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support for pulmonary endarterectomy: A 17-year experience from the UK national cohort,” which explores the differences between survivors and non-survivors of this practice.

As always, follow along in the latest issue at www.jhltonline.org/current, or ISHLT members can log in at ishlt.org/journal-of-heart-lung-transplantation. The episode is available on your podcast network of choice, or visit this link to hear more now.