Organ Transplantation & Graft Rejections

Socioeconomic factors

 Socioeconomic factors have been shown to affect health care outcomes. Poverty, unemployment, and low education level have been listed among the factors that adversely affect health.

Transplantation noncompliance: occupational status, educational level, language or cultural barriers, and ethnic background.  Race and income have substantial effects on mortality and use of services among Medicare beneficiaries.  Poor individuals are less likely than wealthy individuals to be medically suitable, to be interested in transplantation, and to complete the pre- transplantation workup

 Based on UNOS data, in patients with liver transplant, it has been shown that neighbourhood income had no effect on graft or patient survival, education had only marginal influence on the outcome (survival was lower in those with a high school education than in those with graduate education), and patients with Medicaid and Medicare had lower survival when compared with those with private insurance .The results of our study that was done in kidney transplant recipients are similar. In the entire patient group, there is a statistically significant benefit to graft and patient survival from having private insurance compared with Medicare. This effect was observed across almost all racial groups (except for Asian patients, for whom there was no significant association between private insurance and graft survival). HMO/PPO was associated with significantly higher risk for graft failure but improved patient survival. These results are similar to those reported in liver transplant recipients.