Organ donationGender Bias in Renal Transplantation: Are Women Alone Donating Kidneys in India?
Section snippets
Methods
The study was a retrospective single center review conducted at our institute, a tertiary care facility servicing the population of Northern India. Records of all consecutive living related and living unrelated kidney transplantations between 2001 and 2005 were reviewed. Variables examined included recipient and donor age, gender, date of transplantation, underlying basic disease, HLA typing, and relationship of donor to patient. Cadaveric transplantations were excluded. The data were analyzed
Results
The annual incidence of ESRD reported in India varies from 34 to 240 per million population.9 An average of 840 new cases of ESRD are registered every year at our institute. In all, 1031 recipient-donor pairs were worked up as potential candidates for renal transplantation between 2001 and 2005. Among these, 695 (67.4%) were females and 336 (32.6%) were males (P < .001). There were a total of 682 donors and recipients in the study period. Of the 682 recipients, 606 (88.9%) were males and 76
Discussion
In our study from a single center, males received significantly greater numbers of living donor renal transplants than their female counterparts. Studies from developed nations such as the United States,4 Sweden,5 and Canada10 have also shown a similar gaping gender disparity in access to obtaining renal transplants. Few reports are, however, available from developing countries where the situation is expected to be even worse. A 1998 study from India by Avula et al11 reported a 16%
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