Liver transplant waitlist removal, transplantation rates and post-transplant survival in Hispanics.

Abstract

Background and objectivesHispanics are the fastest growing population in the USA, and our objective was to determine their waitlist mortality rates, liver transplantation (LT) rates and post-LT outcomes.MethodsAll adults listed for LT with the UNOS from 2002 to 2018 were included. Competing risk analysis was performed to assess the association between ethnic group with waitlist removal due to death/deterioration and transplantation. For sensitivity analysis, Hispanics were matched 1:1 to Non-Hispanics using propensity scores, and outcomes of interest were compared in matched cohort.ResultsDuring this period, total of 154,818 patients who listed for liver transplant were involved in this study, of them 23,223 (15%) were Hispanics, 109,653 (71%) were Whites, 13,020 (8%) were Blacks, 6,980 (5%) were Asians and 1,942 (1%) were others. After adjusting for differences in clinical characteristics, compared to Whites, Hispanics had higher waitlist removal due to death or deterioration (adjusted cause-specific Hazard Ratio: 1.034, p = 0.01) and lower transplantation rates (adjusted cause-specific Hazard Ratio: 0.90, pConclusionsThis study showed that Hispanics had higher probability to be removed from the waitlist due to death, and lower probability to be transplanted, however they had better post-LT outcomes when compared to whites.