Should doctors game the wait list for organ transplants to help their patients?

It works like this: Your place on the waiting list for hearts depends on your “status.” If you weren’t getting that IV drug, you’d be considered “Status 2,” and your median wait time for a heart would be 630 days. Not good.

You’re on the IV drug, though, so you’re considered “Status 1.” But “Status 1” is divided into two more categories: If you’re on a low dose of the IV drug, you’re classified as “1B,” cutting your median wait to 301 days. That’s where you are now. Better, but still not great.

But if you were in an intensive care unit, receiving a high dose of your IV drug, and you had a catheter placed in your pulmonary artery to monitor cardiac performance, you would be “Status 1A.” Your median wait would drop to 110 days.

So you’re unlikely to get a heart anytime soon unless you can be listed as 1A. And in your case, if you weren’t up for a transplant, there would be no call to implant a pulmonary-artery catheter; it’s uncomfortable (it is inserted through your neck or under your collarbone) and carries a risk of infection. There would also be no call to raise your dose of the IV drug that’s helping your heart contract; when used long term, higher doses can increase the risk of sudden cardiac death.