Patients who die waiting for a kidney, or who are removed from the transplant waitlist for poor health, are usually considered unfortunate victims of the ever-growing shortage of available organs.
Yet a new study has found that most candidates have had multiple opportunities to receive a transplant, but the offered organs were declined by their transplant team and subsequently transplanted in someone lower on the waitlist.
Among the candidates who received at least one offer during the study period, nearly one-third (approximately 10,000 people per year) died or were removed from the list without receiving a transplant.
Candidates who died without a transplant received a median of 16 offers (over 651 days) while waitlisted.
“Presumably, these offers were declined primarily because centers were expecting patients to get a better offer in a timely manner,” says study leader Sumit Mohan, MD, associate professor of medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health.
“In some cases, a decline may have been the right decision, but our data suggest that many others probably would have been better served if their transplant center had accepted one of the offers.”
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