*Purpose: Recent advances in technology and recovery procedures has enabled donation after circulatory death (DCD) heart donation resulting in a significant increase in the number of patients receiving heart transplantation. There has been concern that DCD heart procurement may impair the procurement of other organs, particularly liver. We sought to examine this issue by determining if the overall and organ specific recovery and transplantation or yield of these donors’ organs are impacted by these advancements.

*Methods: Observed to expected (O:E) yield ratios for each organ were calculated using the OPTN data on DCD heart donors from 12/1/2019 to 8/29/2020 (9 months). Organ yield models as developed by the SRTR were used to calculate the expected organ yield for these donors.

*Results: There were 94 DCD heart donors in the cohort and 84 hearts were recovered and transplanted. The procurement of hearts from DCD donors did not appear to have any significant impact on the recovery and transplantation of other organs. The observed yields of liver (O:E: 1.23 (0.91-1.54)­­ ), kidney (O:E : 1.01 (0.92-1.09)­­ ), lung (O:E: 0.86 (0.39-1.43) ), and pancreas (O:E: 1.02 (0.41 – 1.63) ) did not significantly differed from their expected yield (Figure 1). However, the O:E yield ratio for each organ was above one with the exception of lung. The overall organ yield of DCD heart donors was observed to be 36% higher than expected (338 vs. 249, p value < .001). The overall yield difference was primarily driven by the significant increase in heart yield.

*Conclusions: The advances in DCD recovery procedures and the incorporation of thoracic and abdominal perfusion in recent years have been revolutionary, leading to a significant increase in heart and overall organ yield from these donors. There has been no impairment of the procurement of other organs based on the expected yields for these donors. The impact of these advancements has been substantial, representing a new source of heart donation while maintaining successful recovery and transplantation of other organs.

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