First Clinical Evaluation of Heart Transplantation With Grafts Preserved Using an Ex-vivo Extended Perfusion System

Heart transplantation is a scarce resource, only 1 patient among 2 had the opportunity to be grafted in France in 2022. Despite the shortage of organs, some potential heart transplants are currently not recovered because the ischemia duration anticipated before being grafted (from donor to recipient) is too long and not compatible with transplantation, actually limited to 4h, max. Innovation in ex-vivo hypothermic perfusion allows to consider the extension of the graft viability time, thus offering the possibility of extending the pool of heart grafts available to the patients, The study aims to demonstrate the feasibility of taking heart grafts from donors in Martinique and Guadeloupe, transferring them via air transport and then successfully transplanting them to patients hospitalized in France, up to 14 hours later, using an ex-vivo cold perfusion device to protect the heart during transport. Patients involved in this study will be patients in desperate need of transplantation, with no chance of receiving it, due to the French transplant allocation policy.