The outcomes and controversies of transplant tourism-Lessons of an 11-year retrospective cohort study from Taiwan
Journal
PLoS ONE
Journal Volume
12
Journal Issue
6
Date Issued
2017
Author(s)
Abstract
Background: Transplant tourism has increased rapidly in the past two decades, accounting for about 10% of world organ transplants. However it is ethically controversial and discouraged by professional guidelines. We conducted this study to investigate the outcomes and trends of overseas kidney and liver transplantation in Taiwan to provide a sound basis for ethical reflection. Methods and findings: The Taiwanese National Health Insurance Research Database was used to identify 2381 domestic and 2518 overseas kidney transplant (KT) recipients from 1998 to 2009 and 1758 domestic and 540 overseas liver transplantation (LT) recipients from 1999 to 2009. Cox proportional hazards models were used to assess the risks of mortality and graft failure. The numbers of overseas transplantation increased after 2000, reached a peak in 2005 and decreased after 2007. Compared to their domestic counterparts, the overseas KT recipients were older, male predominant, with shorter pre-op dialysis period and more comorbidities. Similarly, the overseas LT recipients were older, male predominant and had more hepatocellular carcinoma cases. The 1-, 5-, and 10-year patient survival rates were 96.9%, 91.7% and 83.0% respectively for domestic KT and 95.8%, 87.8% and 73.1% for overseas KT (p<0.001). The 1-, 5-, and 10-year patient survival rates were 89.2%, 79.5%, 75.2% for domestic LT and 79.8%, 54.7%, 49.9% for overseas LT (p<0.001). Conclusion: The poorer outcomes of the overseas groups may be due to more older patients, more comorbidities (KT), or more hepatocellular carcinoma recurrences (LT). After domestic reform and international ethical challenges, the numbers of organ tourism decreased but the practice still persisted surreptitiously. Compulsory registration policies for overseas transplantation with international conventions to sanction organ trafficking and transplant tourism should be considered to stop these controversial practices. ? 2017 Tsai et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Other Subjects
cyclosporin; immunoglobulin G; mycophenolate mofetil; rapamycin; tacrolimus; adult; age; aged; Article; cancer recurrence; cohort analysis; comorbidity; controlled study; female; gender; graft failure; graft recipient; hemodialysis; human; immunosuppressive treatment; kidney failure; kidney transplantation; liver cell carcinoma; liver transplantation; major clinical study; male; medical tourism; retrospective study; risk assessment; surgical mortality; survival rate; Taiwan; trend study; middle aged; Adult; Aged; Female; Humans; Kidney Transplantation; Liver Transplantation; Male; Medical Tourism; Middle Aged; Retrospective Studies; Taiwan
Publisher
Public Library of Science
Type
journal article