THURSDAY, Aug. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) who undergo heart transplants have comparable short-term survival and possibly better long-term survival than people who receive heart transplants for other reasons, according to research published online Aug. 24 in Circulation: Heart Failure.
Martin S. Maron, M.D., of Tufts Medical Center in Boston, and colleagues examined demographic, clinical, and survival data on 26,706 adult heart transplant recipients, 303 (1 percent) of whom were HCM patients, to determine the occurrence, clinical characteristics, and prognosis of HCM patients undergoing heart transplants between 1990 and 2004.
The researchers found the one-, five-, and 10-year overall survival rates for HCM transplant patients to be 85, 75, and 61 percent, respectively, with a trend toward better survival than that of non-HCM patients (82, 70, and 49 percent, respectively; P = 0.05). HCM patients showed better survival rates over time than non-HCM patients in propensity-matched, covariate-adjusted Cox regression model analysis.
"HCM patients comprise a small subset (1 percent) of the overall population of patients who undergo heart transplantation in the United States. Nonetheless, survival following transplant among HCM patients is comparable to patients transplanted for non-HCM cardiovascular diseases, with possible enhanced survival over time," the authors write.
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