Transplantation and the Medicare End-Stage Renal Disease Program

To the Editor: Eggers (Jan. 28 issue) ¹ noted that 11 percent of black patients with end-stage renal disease received kidney transplants, as compared with 22 percent of white patients with the disease, during eight years of the end-stage renal disease program (through 1985). He concluded that blacks received transplants at only half the rate of whites. Recent data from ESRD Network 20 on Georgia and South Carolina² indicate that not only differences in race and age but also differences in sex are prominent among renal-transplant recipients. To qualify the frequency of transplantation in demographic groups, we define a transplantation rate.