The International Heart Transplant Survival Algorithm (IHTSA): A New Model to Improve Organ Sharing and Survival

In this paper, Nilsson et al present the first international survival prediction model for heart-transplanted patients.  The findings from this study show that a flexible non-linear artificial neural network model can be used to predict both short- and longterm mortality with higher accuracy. Furthermore, the results indicate that a survival prediction based organ sharing system may allocate more organs compared with a criterion-based system.