Keywords: Sickle Cell Disease, Transplant, Survival, ESRD, Kidney
To reevaluate the priority of Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) patients with End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) as kidney transplant recipients, we examined the survival of SCD ESRD patients with and without kidney transplantation compared to other kidney transplantation patients in a national database. Studies have shown that there exists a racial disparity in renal transplantation due to under use of transplantation among blacks who are candidates for kidney transplants (Epstein, A. M., et al. 2000). The sample consists of 980,118 patients with SCD (n=2,322) and diabetes (type I and II, n=977,796) as the primary cause of ESRD in the 2012 United States Renal Data System (USRDS). Survival analyses (Kaplan-Meier Survival Curves and the Log-Rank test, Cox Proportional Hazards Modeling, and Chi-Square testing), adjusted for race, age, and gender, were conducted for five-year study periods. Based on the findings from this national database on ESRD, we hope to impact changes in health care policies that might elevate SCD patients to higher priority renal transplant recipients.