New Kidney Transplant Policy Could Give Preference to Younger Patients

The United Network for Organ Sharing in the US is mulling new proposals that will change the prevailing organ transplant guidelines. The new proposals favor younger patients receiving healthier kidneys rather than the current policy where the patients who have waited the longest and are the sickest receive the first preference.

“Right now, if you’re 77 years old and you’re offered an 18-year-old’s kidney, you get it,” said Dr. Richard N. Formica, a transplant physician at Yale University and a member of the panel that wrote the proposed policy told the New York Times. He added that the "problem is that you’ll die with that kidney still functioning, while a 30-year-old could have gotten that kidney and lived with it to see his kids graduate from college.”

The new system could bring the kidney transplant allocation parameters closer to the heart and liver allocation systems The proposals are open to public for comment until April 1, 2011.


Source-Medindia