COMPETITION EFFETS MOS COMPLEX LIVER SURGERY

More competition between medical centers that perform liver transplants may mean sicker patients get lower-quality donor organs, according to a U.S. study. When more than one center has patients on the same donor list, the centers have an incentive to get organs for as many of their own patients as possible, wrote researchers, whose report appeared in Liver Transplantation. So doctors are more likely to take the first available organ when their patient is at the top of the transplant list, whether or not that pairing has the best chance to succeed, rather than risk the organ will go to another center. "There is the question whether competition decreases the ability of a center to better match donor and recipient characteristics," wrote John Paul Roberts, from the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues. They analyzed data on more than 38,000 liver recipients who had transplants from non-living donors between 2003 and 2009. The transplants were done at 112 medical centers in 47 so-called distribution areas - some covered by only one center and some that relayed organs to multiple transport centers. Roberts and his colleagues found "clinically important differences" showing patients who received organs were initially worse off, with a higher risk of dying or having their transplant fail, in areas that had more medical centers in competition for the same organs. For example, 10 percent of patients who received organs at centers with no competition had the worst scores for liver disease severity pre-transplant, compared to more than 28 percent of those in the high-competition distribution areas. FOR MORE...SEE BELOW LINK... SOURCE:---http://www.indianexpress.com/news/competition-affects-who-gets-a-liver-transplant-study/1055604