By Cara Murez, HealthDay Reporter
Many transplant centers routinely practice “list-diving,” when the top candidate among potential organ recipients is skipped in favor of someone further down the list, new research shows.
The top candidate is ranked that way based on an objective algorithm using age, waiting time and other factors, while choosing someone else happens with little oversight or transparency. Read more from U.S. News and World Report.
By F. Perry Wilson, MD, MSCE
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Welcome to Impact Factor, your weekly dose of commentary on a new medical study. I’m Dr F. Perry Wilson of the Yale School of Medicine.
The idea of rationing medical care is anathema to most doctors. Sure, we acknowledge that the realities of healthcare costs and insurance companies might limit our options, but there is always a sense that when something is truly, truly needed, we can get it done. Read more in Medscape.
17 people die every day waiting for an organ transplant.
And there’s one non-profit monopoly that influences the lives and deaths of thousands.
It’s the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS, the single organization that runs America’s organ transplant system.
Read more in NPR News.
By Ashleigh Hollowell
Seventeen people die per day awaiting organ transplants and top health systems and hospitals like Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic continue to seek ways to improve outcomes for the 104,000 patients on organ transplant waiting lists in the U.S.
Even though 2022 was the 12th consecutive year on record for deceased organ donations, one of the persistent challenges is the lack of viable donated organs, according to an April 5 news release from Mayo Clinic. However, experts say medical advances are working to solve challenges like this — one of which includes expanding the pool of transplant donations.
Read more in Becker’s Hospital Review.
The Biden administration announced a plan to modernize how patients are matched to organs, seeking to shorten wait times, address racial inequities and reduce deaths.
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it would seek to break up the network that has long run the nation’s organ transplant system, as part of a broader modernization effort intended to shorten wait times, address racial inequities and reduce the number of patients who die while waiting.
More than 100,000 people in the United States are awaiting organ transplants in a system that has long been defined by an imbalance between supply and demand. Read the full story in The New York Times.
All potential transplant candidates undergo medical and psychosocial evaluations, which are crucial in determining whether they can get a transplant. The latter are meant to ensure that a patient has adequate social support and is committed to following the recommendations of their medical team. Psychosocial evaluations also consider a patient’s history of misusing alcohol or other substances, as well as factors related to their mental health. Read more in Penn Today.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — While the evaluation process and placement of patients on the transplant waitlist can be a challenge, maintaining their readiness has equal importance, a speaker at the Cutting Edge of Transplantation Summit said. Read more in Healio.
The Board of Directors of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) has approved a mandatory waiting time adjustment for Black kidney transplant candidates disadvantaged by race-based kidney function estimates. The policy revision, which went into effect on January 5, 2023, is a major step toward kidney transplantation equity. Read more in Renal & Urology News.
A new method of donor-lung distribution is projected to decrease the number of candidate deaths who are on the waitlist for lung transplant, according to a study by Cleveland Clinic and the U.S. Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) published in The American Journal of Transplantation. Read the full article in Medical Life Sciences.
By Adrian Whelan
There are over 138,000 patients on the waiting list for a kidney transplant in the United States, as the demand for kidney transplants continues to greatly exceed the number of organs available for transplantation. This limits the number of patients who can benefit from the improvements in quality of life and survival offered by kidney transplantation. Ensuring equitable access to such a limited supply of organs is a major priority of the transplant community, including the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) which oversees policy development for organ allocation in the United States. Indeed, the OPTN includes providing equity in access to transplants as one of its four key goals in its strategic plan. Read this full article in the AJKD Blog.