Researchers evaluate novel organ sharing system that could help save more lives

Where you live in the country can impact your ability to receive an organ transplant.

Saint Louis University's Center for Outcome Research has received a $1 million grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases to review regional kidney and liver distribution in the United States and equalize the access to transplantation among patients with similar stages of organ failure across the country.

Recent studies have found that patients with similar diseases but living in different parts of the country had substantially different waiting times and waitlist mortality rates due to geographical differences in organ supply. The resulting disparity can mean some patients will not have access to organ donations that could save their lives, says Krista Lentine, M.D., associate professor of internal medicine and lead researcher at Saint Louis University School of Medicine.

"The geographic regions were established prior to the availability of modern systems of organ preservation and without anticipation of the current unevenly distributed organ supply-demand ratios across the country," said Lentine.

As part of a multi-institutional collaboration also involving researchers at Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth and the University of Washington, Lentine and colleagues are trying to design and evaluate a novel geographic system of organ sharing that better balances donor and recipient populations.

The primary goal is to save more lives and prevent illnesses from becoming more severe by reducing the amount of time patients who live in under-supplied areas would have to wait for a transplant. The researchers also will quantify the economic cost of creating a new organ sharing system.

The team hypothesizes that reducing the number of patients who progress to the most advanced stages of illness while awaiting transplantation will save money in the long run.

"We believe that our research can provide the objective evidence to achieve fairness in the distribution of kidney and liver transplants regardless of where one lives," she said.

Source: Saint Louis University's Center for Outcome Research