WASHINGTON: When a patient dies waiting for a kidney in the United States, they’re generally considered the unfortunate victim of a growing donor shortage. But the reality is more troubling: in the vast majority of such cases, patients had multiple opportunities to receive a transplant, but the organs were declined by their transplant team.
“What we found is 84 percent of kidneys in the US get turned down at least one time, which is crazy,” Sumit Mohan, lead author of a study published Friday in the influential Jama Network Open journal, told AFP.
It comes on the heels of another paper this week that found the US rejects about 3,500 kidneys each year because of the donors’ advanced age, even though 60 percent of these would be used in France where they prolong life and are useful especially for older recipients.
The new analysis found that for each patient who received a kidney from 2008 to 2015, their medical team rejected a median of 17 organs before finally accepting one. – AFP
