Reperfusion Strategies in Donation After Circulatory Death Heart Transplantation: An Up-to-Date Narrative Review

Donation after circulatory death has emerged worldwide as a safe and effective alternative pathway to increase the donor pool. However, organs undergo a variable period of warm ischemia during the agonal phase and the cardiac arrest before graft procurement, and the heart is particularly vulnerable to injury provoked by warm ischemia and subsequent reperfusion. Several reperfusion strategies are currently available for the recovery and assessment of heart function in these donors, with promising early and long-term results. Nevertheless, each technique implies specific financial, logistical and ethical challenges, translating into a heterogeneous landscape of protocols across European and non-European countries. Additionally, no randomized clinical trials have been published to assess the superiority of one technique over the other, and current clinical evidence is based on retrospective registry data and single-center observational studies.