In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the civil rights of people with autism and other disabilities. A number of posts have provided details on discrimination in organ transplantation.
Despite similar kidney transplant outcomes, adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) were less likely than the general population to be evaluated for transplant and less likely to receive one, a propensity-score matched analysis found.
In the cohort of more than 21,000 end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) patients on Medicare, multivariable analysis showed that patients with IDD were 54% less likely than those without IDD to be evaluated by a transplant surgeon (OR 0.46, 95% CI 0.43-0.50) and 62% less likely to receive a transplant (OR 0.38, 95% CI 0.34-0.42), according to researchers led by Brittany Hand, PhD, of The Ohio State University School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences in Columbus.
Among the subset evaluated by a transplant surgeon, about a fourth of the patients included overall, those with IDD had 51% lower odds of receiving a transplant (OR 0.49, 95% CI 0.43-0.55), the group reported in JAMA Surgery.
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Only some states have passed laws that explicitly prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities in transplantation, they noted, adding that there's a need for strong evidence to back new policies -- like a bill at the federal level that would prohibit healthcare providers from denying someone access to an organ transplant because of a disability.
"We echo the authors' assertion that there is an urgent need to address bias and curb discrimination against this vulnerable patient population," said Melissa Chen, MD, and Alexander Toledo, MD, both of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, writing in an accompanying editorial.
