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Deciding Who Gets New Livers First |
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FRIDAY, Jan. 23 (HealthDayNews) -- Transplantation rates have increased and the waiting list shortened as the result of a new ranking system for people in the United States who need liver transplants.
The findings are reported in a study in the January issue of Liver Transplantation.
The liver allocation policy in the United States was changed in early 2002 to put more emphasis on a patients' disease severity and less weight on the amount of time a person had been on the waiting list.
Researchers examined data for a year before the ranking system change and for a year after. They compared before and after transplant rates, list dropout rates and patient survival.
They found a 10.2 percent increase in liver transplantation and a 12 percent reduction in registrations to the waiting list after the new policy was put in place. There was also a 3.5 percent decline in the death rate for patients on the waiting list.
Under the new ranking system, people with liver cancer received increased priority, which resulted in an increase in transplantation rates for that group.
The study authors note that the high number of liver cancer patients in the United States (about 16,000) could overwhelm the transplantation system, which does about 5,000 transplants a year. The authors say the ranking system for liver transplants must be continually refined.
More information
Here's where you can learn more about liver transplants.
(SOURCE: John Wiley & Sons Inc., news release, January 2004)
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