New tool to improve kidney transplant success, reduce costs
Waitlists for life-saving kidney transplants are long and every donated kidney is precious. That’s why patients on the waitlist are screened regularly to ensure their suitability for transplant. But is the screening process as effective as it could be? A new study in the INFORMS journal Operations Research, conducted by INFORMS members UBC Sauder professor Steven Shechter, Woonghee Tim Huh of UBC Sauder, and Alireza Sabouri of the University of Calgary, devised a strategy— the first evidence-based tool of its kind— that would reduce the number of risky transplants by 23 per cent and reduce the annual number of screenings by 27 per cent.