Epidemiologic evidence of transmission of donor-related bacterial infection through a transplanted heart.

This study describes a patient who had fulminant infectious myocarditis as a result of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus after receiving a heart transplant from an infected donor. There was complete concordance of typing results between donor and recipient strains that were different from the 20 isolates with which they were compared. Molecular epidemiologic study provided compelling evidence that a transplanted organ can transmit a bacterial infection from the donor to the recipient.