Impact of severe obesity on heart transplantation outcomes: A meta-analysis of survival and complications
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Heart transplantation (HT) is the standard treatment for end-stage heart failure, but severe obesity (Body Mass Index [BMI] ≥ 35 kg/m²) is linked to worse outcomes and is considered a relative contraindication. Obese patients face increased perioperative risks, longer wait times, and reduced survival, though improved clinical care may mitigate some effects. As obesity rates rise, the suitability of the current BMI is increasingly debated. Evidence remains limited and inconsistent, highlighting a need for clearer guidance. This systematic review and meta-analysis assess the impact of severe obesity on survival and post-transplant complications in HT recipients. Methods: This systematic review and meta-analysis followed preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and was registered in PROSPERO (CRD420251036442). We included cohort studies and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) (2000-2025) comparing outcomes in adult heart transplant recipients with a BMI ≥ 35 kg/m² vs lower BMI. Primary outcomes were mortality and post-transplant complications. Searches were conducted in PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and Cochrane CENTRAL. Multiple reviewers did data extraction and bias assessment (ROBINS-I) independently. Random-effects models were used for statistical analysis, with heterogeneity assessed via I², and sensitivity analyses performed. Publication bias was evaluated using funnel plots. Results: The search strategy retrieved 1,697 articles or abstracts, 595 were excluded for being duplicates, and 59 full-text articles were selected for full-text analysis. Of these, 9 cohorts were included, 7 from the United States and 2 from Canada, with 218,272 patients, of whom 206,459 had a BMI < 35 and 11,813 had a BMI ≥ 35kg/m². Conclusion: This meta-analysis shows that severe obesity (BMI ≥ 35 kg/m²) remains associated with higher rates of infection, graft failure, and post-transplant mortality, despite advances in care. These outcomes likely reflect underlying immune and metabolic dysfunctions in obese patients, emphasizing the need for tailored strategies to improve long-term survival after heart transplantation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.006 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".