Rolling the Dice at
Transplant Centers
A new
government study has found a "striking" disparity in the success of
transplant centers across the United States, saying a patient's odds
of getting a donated organ and surviving the procedure depends on
where they go.
The report by
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was obtained by The
Associated Press. Researchers looked at three factors: chances of a
patient getting a heart or organ transplant, the organs most in
demand; chances of a patient dying while waiting for a transplant;
and chances of surviving a year, whether the patient receives a
transplant or not.
For
example, at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Lawrence, 89
percent of people waiting for a liver transplant received one during
the mid-1990s. During that same time at the University of Baltimore,
only 21 percent on the list got a liver. According to the United
Network for Organ Sharing, a new patient is added to the organ
waiting list every 16 minutes.
Health experts say the
disparities are due to a variety of factors, including the region's
policies for distributing organs, how effective the local organ bank
is in obtaining organs, and the transplant surgeons'
skills.
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