Three Year Statistics for Blood Type B

I’m such a data nerd. I should have been a statistician or something. All this data at SRTR has me interested. I think the most relevant data point for me is the three year deceased donor transplant rate. I’m going to look at that data point for a bunch of transplant centers.

I pulled statistics for a lot of California transplant centers, those of nearby states, and other large transplant centers. Several interesting points:

• Large cities have longer wait times (or lower % transplanted after three years)
• Northern California is the worst
• Blood type B wait lists are typically worse than the total population
• My PD nurse mentioned listing in Oregon and Washington; the wait list is shorter but would be hard to get there for a transplant
• Mayo Clinic in Phoenix seems like the best place since it’s a large program and within driving distance from Southern California
• What’s up with UC Irvine? I thought of listing there but seems like no blood type B transplants even though there were 64 people listed.

Then there is St. Joseph Hospital. Almost all my doctors are affiliated with St. Joseph and most of my many surgeries were performed there, including the quadruple bypass. Overall, I have no issues with the quality of care, except for the kidney transplant program. I was originally listed at St. Joseph with my sister as a living donor. However, my sister researched the surgeon they assigned to remove her kidney and he was under sanction by the medical board and had ongoing lawsuits. My sister asked for a new surgeon and St. Joseph promptly rejected her as a donor. It wasn’t even a medical excuse but something the social worker made up. We appealed and that was rejected too so we transferred to UCLA Medical Center. We also heard St. Joseph is very protective of their transplant success statistics so they are overly picky in accepting transplants. This is apparent if you look at the numbers above. St. Joseph is in the same UNOS region as all the other SoCal transplant centers yet their transplant rate is significantly below everyone else’s numbers. Are they rejecting kidneys that other centers are fine using? Do all their patients want to wait longer for a “better” kidney?