Time to kidney transplant varies by race, insurance

[Clark]

http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/31/16795380-time-to-kidney-transplant-varies-by-race-insurance?lite

Time to kidney transplant varies by race, insurance
By Genevra Pittman

Kidney disease patients who are black or lack private health insurance are less likely to get matched up with a donor organ before needing to go on dialysis, a new study suggests.
Still, researchers said, as long as patients get a kidney transplant within a year or so of starting dialysis, any extra benefit of a pre-dialysis transplant may be low.
"It's a possible benefit, but it's not entirely clear," said Dr. Morgan Grams, who led the new study at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.
She told Reuters Health the findings represent "just another disparity" for African American patients, in particular, who take longer to get on the waitlist for a donor kidney and are less likely to get one at all.
"Studies over the last 10 to 15 years have consistently shown that minorities have poorer access to transplantation," said Dr. Douglas Scott Keith, head of the kidney transplant program at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville.
"This article basically shows that it's persisting, it hasn't gotten much better," Keith, who wasn't involved in the new study, told Reuters Health.
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