Graft allocation rules for heart transplantation are necessary because of the shortage of heart donors, resulting in high waitlist mortality. The Agence de la biomédecine is the agency in charge of the organ allocation system in France. Assessment of the 2004 urgency-based allocation system identified challenging limitations. A new system based on a score ranking all candidates was implemented in January 2018. In the revised system, medical urgency is defined according to candidate characteristics rather than the treatment modalities, and an interplay between urgency, donor-recipient matching, and geographic sharing was introduced. In this article, we describe in detail the new allocation system and compare these allocation rules to Eurotransplant and US allocation policies.
Keywords: ethics and public policy; health services and outcomes research; heart transplantation/cardiology; organ allocation; organ procurement and allocation; waitlist management.
© 2020 The American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.