A SERVICE
OF 
Journal Briefs:
Black Children Wait-Listed Less for Kidneys; Laparoscopic Nephrectomy Increases
Donations
BALTIMORE: October 15, 2000 · by TNN
Medical Reporter Virginia Baskerville
- Recent journal articles focused on the discrepancy between the number
of black and white children who are wait-listed for kidney transplants and on
laparoscopic kidney removal leading to an increase in kidney
donations.
*Black children and adolescents have been found to be 12%
less likely than their white counterparts to be activated on a waiting list for
kidney transplantation, even after the findings were controlled for factors
including age, gender, and socioeconomic status, according to a study by Susan
L. Furth, MD, PhD, of Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions and colleagues. The
longitudinal study, which looked at 2162 white and 1122 black children and
adolescents with endstage renal disease, "is the first report to document that
black/white differences in access to the renal transplant waiting list exist in
the pediatric ESRD population," the authors wrote in the October issue of
Pediatrics (2000;106:756-761). However, they could find no clear
reason for the discrepancy. Read the abstract at
www.pediatrics.org/cgi/content/abstract/106/4/756.
*The
availability of laparoscopic donor nephrectomy and a formal education program
to teach potential kidney recipients and their families about live donor
transplantation has doubled the live donor transplantation rate at University
of Maryland in Baltimore, one of the pioneers in live donor nephrectomy. Eugene
J. Schweitzer, MD, and colleagues reported in September in Annals of
Surgery that, before the availability of the laparoscopic procedure in
1996 and before their institution initiated a formal education program, 12.2%
of patients with endstage renal disease received a live donor kidney within
three years of being evaluated for a transplant (2000;232:392-400). However,
the figure rose to 24.7% after the laparoscopic procedure and educational
program were instituted. Read the abstract at
http://ips1.lwwonline.com/servlet/GetFileServlet?J=160&I=58&A=11&U=1&T=0.
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