No racial gap seen in liver transplant results

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In the 1980s and early 1990s, several studies found lower survival rates for African Americans and Asians who had a liver transplant, but now outcomes are comparable for Caucasians, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians, new research indicates.

According to the report that appears in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, this is the first study to find no racial disparities in long-term liver transplantation outcomes.

The authors believe that much of the credit in equalizing outcomes goes to the introduction of the drug tacrolimus to prevent rejection of transplanted organs.

Dr. Johnny C. Hong from the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues analyzed data on 817 patients who underwent transplantation between 1984 and 1993, when cyclosporine was the main anti-rejection agent, and on 1922 patients transplanted between 1994 and 2007 when tacrolimus was the primary drug.

As noted, in the earlier era, African Americans and Asians had inferior outcomes compared with the other racial groups. For instance, the 10-year patient survival rate for Caucasians was 61 percent, while the rate for African Americans was 50 percent.

In the later era, the 10-year survival rate for African Americans and Caucasians was nearly identical, roughly 65 percent.

"Although our study is the first to find equivalent long-term outcomes among racial groups after liver transplantation, access to care for all patients with end-stage liver disease clearly remains a major goal for all transplant centers," Hong emphasized.

SOURCE: Journal of the American College of Surgeons, May 2008.