Table 1.

Potential Topics for a Task Force Charged With the Production of a Consensus Statement on the Care of Heart Transplant Recipients With COVID-19

•Precautionary measures

•Education of patients and caregivers

•Indications for hospitalization and transfer to the heart transplant center if patients are initially hospitalized elsewhere

• Structured approach to clinical phenotyping with focus on: ○ Time after heart transplant ○ COVID-19 stage ○ Comorbidities

•Laboratory evaluation at presentation and during follow-up

• Echocardiographic monitoring with focus on: ○ Heart allograft function ○ Suspected SARS-CoV-2 myocardial damage ○ Presence of pericardial effusion

•Rejection surveillance (schedule, endomyocardial biopsy, gene profiling, donor cell-free DNA)

• Structured Approach to modulation of immunosuppression ○ Calcineurin inhibitors ○ Antimetabolites ○ Proliferation inhibitors ○ Corticosteroids

•Surveillance for cardiac allograft vasculopathy

•Recommendations on COVID-19 therapies based on evolving information from clinical trials

•Systematic evaluation of drug-drug interactions

•Ongoing evaluation of safety for heart transplant recipients of vaccines as they become clinically available

COVID-19 = coronavirus disease-2019.