DOI: 10.36347/sjpms.2023.v10i04.001

Pages: 97-104

Organ transplantation is becoming a major public health issue in many countries due to its attributable death rate and the excessive cost. There is a growing gap between organ supply and demand for organ transplantation in the US, which is causing major public health crisis. Twenty people on average die each day while waiting for a transplant because the supply of available organs from deceased donors does not meet the demand. National organ donation has increased in the past two decades; however, the number of individuals who need transplants has risen much faster as new patient is added to the national transplant waiting list every ten minutes. To address this disparity, not only the number of donors must be increased, but also the discard rate of available organs must be reduced. The kidney discard rate has increased by almost four times from the late 1980s to 2009, from approximately five percent to nearly 20 percent. So, it is important to investigate factors that may decrease the chance of an organ to be discarded as well as increase the survival time of transplanted organs. In this paper, we perform statistical survival analysis to study the impact of donor’s age on organ survival. Transplanted kidneys, livers, and intestines between 1987 and 2010 are investigated in this study. The results show that donor's age is an important factor for transplanted kidneys and livers donated by younger donors and survive for longer times while donor's age does not seem to be correlated with the survival time of transplanted intestines.