Blood type not a factor for babies who need heart transplant

Babies waiting desperately to receive a heart transplant can receive a heart from a donor even if the blood type is incompatible -- good news for infants who might otherwise die, researchers say.

Heart transplants not compatible with the recipient's blood type were as safe as transplants with blood-compatible hearts when given to infants up to age 1, they said.

Three years after getting a transplant, children had equal survival rates -- about 75 percent -- whether or not the donor heart was compatible with their blood type, the researchers said at a meeting of the American Heart Association. There was no additional risk of organ rejection, they said.

"Pediatric heart transplantation has always suffered from the lack of organ availability. So children who require a heart transplant have always been at a huge disadvantage," said Dr. Luca Vricella, chief of pediatric heart transplantation at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore.

Dr. Vinay Nadkarni of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, a spokesman for the American Heart Association, said the findings affect babies whose hearts are so sick they are in line for a transplant.

"We know that 40 percent of those babies will not survive long enough to receive a compatible transplant," Nadkarni said. "This gives them the same chance as if they could have had a (compatible) matched organ."

The average stay on a waiting list exceeds two months.

The researchers said after the age of 1 year, children's immune systems tend to be more developed and thus more prone to reject transplanted organs.

Babies with congenital heart defects -- defects they were born with -- are the mostly likely to need a transplant. Babies with cardiomyopathy -- damage to the heart muscle -- also may need a transplant.

A successful infant heart transplantation enables the child to enjoy a good quality of life, the researchers said.