Doctors Complete World’s First Heart Transplant Between HIV-Positive Patients

Nearly a decade since the introduction of the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act—which allows individuals with HIV to donate their organs to others with the disease—doctors have successfully performed the world’s first-ever heart transplant between two HIV-positive patients. 

Surgeons at New York’s Montefiore Health System, one of only 25 centers in the United States green-lighted to offer the complex procedure, completed a simultaneous heart and kidney transplant for the patient, in her sixties, earlier this Spring.

“Thanks to significant medical advances, people living with HIV are able to control the disease so well that they can now save the lives of other people living with this condition,” said Ulrich P Jorde, Section Head of Heart Failure, Cardiac Transplantation, and Mechanical Circulatory Support. 

“This surgery is a milestone in the history of organ donation and offers new hope to people who once had nowhere to turn,” he added.

According to the hospital, there are 60,000 to 100,000 individuals in the United States who are awaiting a new heart, though only 3,800 transplants were performed in 2021. 

This breakthrough, which now makes the option of a transplant available to HIV-positive patients, will expand the overall pool of donors, meaning “more people, with or without HIV, will have quicker access to a lifesaving organ.” 

[via Interesting Engineering and Montefiore Health System, cover image via Luuuusa | Dreamstime.com]