Heart Transplant Offer Acceptance Highest for White Women

TUESDAY, March 26, 2024 (HealthDay News) — The cumulative incidence of heart transplant offer acceptance is highest for White women, according to a study published online March 25 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Khadijah Breathett, M.D., from the Krannert Cardiovascular Research Center at Indiana University in Indianapolis, and colleagues conducted a cohort study to examine whether race or gender of a heart transplant candidate is associated with the probability of a donor heart being accepted by the transplant center team using the United Network for Organ Sharing datasets.

There were 14,890 candidates listed for heart transplant; of these, 30.9 and 69.1 percent were Black and White, respectively, and 73.6 and 26.4 percent were men and women, respectively. The researchers found that the highest cumulative incidence of acceptance was seen for White women, followed by Black women, White men, and Black men. For the first offer through the 16th offer, the odds of acceptance were less for Black than White candidates (odds ratio, 0.76 for first offer). For the first through the sixth offer, the odds of acceptance were higher for women than men (odds ratio, 1.53 for the first offer); the odds were lower for women for the 10th through the 31st offers.

“The cumulative incidence of donor heart offer acceptance by a transplant center team was consistently highest for White women followed by Black women, White men, and Black men,” the authors write. “Further investigation is needed of the hospital-level decision-making process.”

Several authors disclosed ties to the pharmaceutical and medical device industries.

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