Study: Gender, race influence liver transplants

Your gender, your race and your insurance status play an important part in the process of evaluating your fitness for transplant and listing for receiving a donor organ, according to a new study.

The research, which was published in the American Journal of Transplantation, looked at 144,507 patients hospitalized in Pennsylvania with liver-related conditions. When analyzing the data, researchers found that 61 percent of men were evaluated for possible liver transplants, versus 39 percent of women.

If that sounds like a big disparity, consider this gap: Researchers found that 73.8 percent of whites were evaluated, compared to a shockingly low 8.6 percent for blacks. Meanwhile, 62 percent of patients with private health plans were evaluated, compared with 4.7 percent who used Medicare only.

To learn more about the study:
- read this UPI piece

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