Heart transplants work better when sex based

William Atkins
Thursday, 13 November 2008 20:47

Science - Health

They checked out 18,240 patients receiving OHT between 1998 and 2007, and kept track of their progress for between 3.4 and ten years.

They divided the four groups into (1) male donor with male recipient, (2) female donor with male recipient, (3) male donor with female recipient, and (4) female donor with female recipient.

Of the patients, 12,951 of them (71%) were male donor-male recipients or female donor-female recipients, with 10,750 being male-male and 2,201 being female-female.

They found that 4,543 patients died during their period of study, about 25%.

Their conclusion was that when the gender of the donor and the recipient was the same, the patient had less risk of dying both in the short-term and in the long-term than when the patient was matched with the opposite sex.

Specifically, the recipients who had the opposite gender as the donor were 15% more likely to die.

They found that the greatest risk of mortality was when a male donor was matched with a female recipient.

Page three concludes.