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Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Analysis: Paying living kidney donors may save lives, money.

On its website, NBC News (10/25, Aleccia, 6.79M) reports that, according to an analysis published Oct. 24 in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, “paying living kidney donors $10,000 to give up their organs would save money over the current system based solely on altruism – even if it only boosts donations by a conservative five percent.” For the study, researchers from the University of Calgary “compared cost data from a cohort of kidney patients identified in 2004 and followed them for three years.” Investigators calculated that “paying living kidney donors $10,000 apiece would save about $340 per patient, compared with the ongoing costs of dialysis, and would also provide a modest boost of .11 in quality-adjusted life years.”

        The Time (10/25, Alter, 13.4M) “Healthland” blog points out that “if the money actually results in a 10% or 20% increase, the savings per patient could reach thousands of dollars,” for the reason that “most patients wait 2-3 years for a kidney, and the cost of dialysis during the wait is usually higher than $10,000.” The analysis did not “address ethical concerns or the potential for abuse,” however.

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