A little more than 50 years ago, the world's first successful kidney transplant took place. Now, more than 16,000 kidney transplants take place each year in the US alone, indicative of just how far organ transplantation has come. Now, reports Medical News Today, researchers have analysed 25 years of transplant data to determine how many years of life have been saved by the procedure.
Statistics up to the beginning of December 2012 reveal that of patients who received a heart transplant, almost 70% were alive 5 years later. For patients who received a kidney transplant from a living donor, 92% were alive 5 years after the procedure. The reports says with figures like these it is no wonder Dr Abbas Rana of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and colleagues hail organ transplantation as the "marvel of modern medicine."
For their study, however, the team wanted to delve deeper into the survival benefits of organ transplantation in the US. They set out to determine how many years of life the procedure has saved between 1987 and 2012.
In 1987, the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) began keeping records of all solid organ transplants that take place in the US, as well as records of patients who were waiting for a transplant. Using the UNOS database, Rana and colleagues reviewed the records of 1,112,835 patients with end-stage organ failure. Of these, 533,329 received a transplant and 579,506 were on the waiting list but did not have the procedure.
The researchers calculated the number of life-years saved by organ transplantation between 1st September, 1987 and 31st December, 2012 by comparing the survival outcomes of patients who underwent the procedure with those who did not. The results of the analysis revealed that over the 25-year period, organ transplantation saved 2,270,859 years of life in the US. Each organ transplant was estimated to have saved around 4.3 years of life.
The researchers hail the almost 2.3m life-years saved by organ transplantation in the US as a "stellar accomplishment” but point out that there is a "critical shortage" of donor organs, which hinders progress in the field of organ transplantation. They note that of the patients on the waiting list for an organ transplant during the 25-year period studied, only 47.9% had the procedure.
"The need is increasing; therefore, organ donation must increase," say the researchers. "We call for deepened support of solid-organ transplant and donation-worthy endeavours with a remarkable record of achievement and a tremendous potential to do even more good for humankind in the future."
[link url="http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/288673.php"]Full Medical News Today report[/link]
[link url="http://archsurg.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2100153"]JAMA Surgery abstract[/link]