Men and women who have heart transplants 'more likely to die if donor is opposite sex'



Revealed: Patients who have a heart transplant are 15 per cent more likely to die if the donor is of the opposite sex (posed by models)

Heart transplant patients are more likely to die if the donor is of the opposite sex, researchers claim.



This could be because of size differences - men’s hearts tend to be larger - or hormonal factors.



Patients who received a heart transplant from a donor of the opposite sex had a 15 per cent higher risk of death than those whose donor was the same sex, researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, in the U.S., found.

The lowest survival rate was in men who had a donor heart from a woman, they told the American Heart Association.



Men given a heart from a female donor were more likely to experience organ rejection.



Women getting a male donor heart were no more likely to reject the organ than if it came from another woman.



The five-year survival rate is 72 per cent for men and 68 per cent for women.



The findings were based on 18,240 patients who had a heart transplant from 1998 to 2007.



If a same-sex heart is not available, patients should still have a transplant rather than waiting for a better match, it was suggested.



‘The rate of survival is clearly superior having a transplant to not having a transplant,’ said Dr Eric Weiss.





