Recent Highlights

Faster decisions for transplants and ventricular assist devices (VADs): We brought more than 13 specialties/departments together to streamline outpatient evaluations for transplants and VADs. We now complete these evaluations in two to three days and have reduced the time from referral to candidacy decision by more than 50 days.

Improving cardiogenic shock care: We developed local, multidisciplinary teams at three Atrium Health hospitals to respond rapidly to cardiogenic shock patients. Our MedCenter Air team is available to transport patients who need complex, high-acuity care, and we use ECMO and other MCS approaches to stabilize patients as needed.

Reducing post-transplant biopsies: We safely reduced the number of biopsies to nine or 10 in the first year after transplant, down from 16 to 20 in our previous protocol. We did this by incorporating echocardiogram and cardiac MRI, and by using blood tests that provide indirect measures of potential rejection. This could eventually eliminate the need for biopsies altogether.

Expanding donor organ access: Sanger started using the TransMedics Organ Care System (OCS™) to expand access to donors. This enables us to accept donations from a larger pool of donors by expanding our retrieval mileage and accepting donation after circulatory death (DCD) organs. This increases organ access and shortens transplant waits while allowing us to maintain high-quality outcomes.

Cardiac contractility modulation (CCM) therapy: The Optimizer® Smart Mini is a minimally invasive device implanted in heart failure patients who have moderate to severe symptoms. Patients are selected after they have been optimized on guideline-directed medical therapy. Sanger started implanting in 2021 and our patients saw an improvement in their New York Heart Association Functional Class because of CCM.