Post-heart transplantation outcome of HeartMate II-bridged recipients requiring unplanned concomitant temporary right ventricular mechanical support.

Objective: Second-generation axial-flow left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) have become an established therapy in bridging end-stage heart failure patients to cardiac transplantation. Despite the proven clinical success of these devices, some patients develop right ventricular (RV) failure after LVAD implantation. We sought to determine post-heart transplantation outcomes of HeartMate II (HMII)-bridged patients who developed postimplantation right ventricular failure and received Levitronix CentriMag for RV support in addition to LVAD.

Methods: This was a single-centre institutional report of 64 patients transplanted during 2007-2013 from a HeartMate II device. Patients were divided into two groups according to whether they received an isolated LVAD (n = 56) or required additional RV mechanical support (n = 8). These two groups were compared for early graft loss (death before discharge or retransplantation), major early post-transplant complications and 3-year graft survival.

Results: Early graft loss was 10.7% in isolated HMII and 25% in HMII + RVAD patients (P = 0.26). There were no observed differences in the rates of primary graft dysfunction (7.3 vs 0%, P = NS), renal failure (16.7 vs 12.5%, P = NS) and stroke (11.1 vs 25%, P = 0.273) between the two groups. Pulmonary artery resistance (odds ratio: 3.286, 95% confidence interval: 1.063-10.157, P = 0.039) was identified as a significant predictor for adverse outcome of mechanically-bridged heart transplant recipients. The 3-year graft survival rate was 86 ± 5% in isolated HMII and 75 ± 15% in HMII + RVAD patients, P = 0.326.

Conclusions: Our data demonstrate that heart transplant recipients who required unplanned RV mechanical support after LVAD implantation achieved comparable rates of early graft loss, post-transplant renal failure and stroke rate in comparison with patients bridged with an isolated HeartMate II assist device. Three-year graft survival was equivalent between those two groups. Given the small sample size, further studies involving more patients are needed to support or challenge our conclusions.