Here’s an article BMJ about a study which followed every single patient listed for a heart transplant in Germany in 1997. The study found NO DIFFERENCE IN SURVIVAL RATES between those who actually received a heart transplant and those who didn’t.
Why wasn’t this front-page banner-headline news? “MOST EXPENSIVE PROCEDURE IN ALL OF MEDICINE DOES NOT SAVE LIVES?”
Yes, I know, it’s just one study. But I am unable to find any others like it. (If anyone knows of any, I’d be grateful if you’d let me know.) Here’s a web page from the National Health Service in the UK on the “Cost-effectiveness of transplantation.” The entire document is about the cost-effectiveness of kidney transplants. It doesn’t say a word about the effectiveness of heart transplants or indeed any other kind of transplants. I’m unable to find any data at all on the matter on either the US Health Resources and Services Administration website, the National Transplant Society website, or the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network website. If they had any data demonstrating the effectiveness of heart transplants, you think they wouldn’t be trumpeting them?
So why do people say heart transplants “save lives?”
UPDATE: The April 2009 issue of the American Journal of Transplantation contains a report on ”Heart Transplantation in the United States 1998-2007” by J.D. Vega et al. The paper makes no mention of whether patients who received a heart transplant lived any longer than those patients listed for a heart transplant who did not receive one.TIP:
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Dr. Evan Levine
old new lefty
Unbreakable
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Salon.com
Comments
Unfortunately it's not open access and the abstract doesn't say how long survival was tracked for the figures provided.
In a Canadian article, diabetics who receive heart transplants actually die at a higher rate than those who don't http://preview.tinyurl.com/cj6vuf
Alicia: very interesting. I shall have a look at these.