In 2018, the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS) and the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) implemented a new allocation system for donor hearts with extended geographical sharing. The new system places patients in new medical urgency status classifications – Adult Status 1 through 6 – with specific status qualification criteria at listing.

A revolutionary new organ preservation system allows transplant programs to travel farther distances to procure donor hearts and provides the ability to better assess potential donor hearts that have borderline function. Approved by the FDA for use with donor hearts within the last 12 months, the organ care system is a portable, warm perfusion and monitoring system designed to keep a donor heart in a beating, human-like, metabolically active state.

Over the last several years, the new lung allocation system has resulted in broader, more equitable sharing of organs across the United States. At some individual transplant centers, this means wait times and the level of illness of patients on the waitlist are increasing.

The lung transplant team at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas (Baylor Dallas), part of Baylor Scott & White Health, is evaluating and testing two new preservation and transport technologies for donor lungs. The goal of both technologies is to improve the method by which organs are preserved after procurement until they get to the recipient.