Measuring kidney transplantation activity

• Autor(a) principal: Lima, Bruno A.
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Outros Autores: Mendes, Miguel, Alves, Helena
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.18/2360
• topic: Kidney Allocation; Kidney Transplantation; Metrics; Waiting Time to Transplantation; Alocação do Enxerto Renal; Métricas; Tempo de Espera para Transplante; Transplantação Renal

[ENG] Kidney allocation from cadaveric donors must balance two main principles: medical utility and justice. The principle of medical benefit is gauged by maximizing efficiency in the use of organs and the principle of justice by its effectiveness, ensuring that all patients have a reasonable opportunity of transplantation. In this paper we present some metrics that, when applied to candidates for kidney transplantation, will help in the best judgment defining kidney allocation systems. Knowing the prevalence and incidence (per year, per million inhabitants) of kidney transplant, candidates demographic factors, such as: sex, age groups, and socioeconomic status; as well as clinical and immunological characteristics: blood group, Panel Reactive Antibody values, Body Mass Index, type of dialysis, cause of renal failure, and comorbidities; allows for an objective comparison of allocation programmes. The waiting time for transplantation should be measured as the median time between the start of dialysis and transplantation of wait -listed patients each year. By using the Cox regression analysis, with time on dialysis for transplantation as a dependent variable and clinical, socio -demographic factors as independent variables, we will shed light on which characteristics affect the access to transplantation.