March 2, 2020 | STAT

Vote for Our Department's Research in #STATMadness Competition

Research by Peter Reese, MD, MSCE, Associate Professor of Health Policy and Medical Ethics, has been nominated as one of the 64 best innovations in science and medicine in the STATMadness bracket-style tournament. You can find Dr. Reese's research at the bottom of the page in the last matchup against Yale. The title and description is:

University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine #2: "Transplanting Infected Hearts"

Hoping to reduce the shortage of organ donors, UPenn researchers transplanted hearts from deceased donors infected with hepatitis C — organs that have long been discarded as unsafe — and treated the recipients with new curative antiviral drugs to prevent infection. Hearts were transplanted into 10 uninfected recipients, and there was a 100% cure rate among the 9 completing antiviral therapy. One recipient died from organ rejection, and another required dialysis, but these were unrelated to the infection and antiviral therapy. The results pave the way for routine use of hep C hearts.

The first round of voting began March 2 and is open until Sunday, March 8. Find the original study in the American Journal of Transplantation.

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