The number of solid organ transplants dropped considerably across the globe over the past two years, researchers discovered. One of the main culprits to that is the impact of the pandemic on health services and patients.
As the pandemic emerged, hospitals had to postpone organ transplant surgeries due to resources like intensive care beds being required for Covid patients and due to concerns regarding complications from patients possibly contracting the virus within hospitals.
In a recent report from NHS Blood and Transplant, it was revealed that during 2020 and 2021, transplant activity was decreased to approximately 80% of normal levels, with 3,391 transplants performed in the UK in contrast to 4,761 in the last 12 months.
A total of 487 patients died while on a waiting list for a transplant, in contrast to 372 in 2019 and 2020.
The service estimated that roughly 7,000 people were on a waiting list for a form of transplant in the United Kingdom, a number that hasn’t been seen for nearly a decade.
In a recently-published international study, presented at the European Society for Organ Transplantation (Esot) congress 2021, it was revealed that the overall number of kidney, liver, lung, and heart transplants from human donors decreased by 31% during the first wave of Covid-19 across a total of 22 countries.
The cumulative drop reached 16% by the end of 2020, and the estimate suggests that the number of performed transplants decreased by over 11,200.
“Temporal trends revealed a marked worldwide reduction in transplant activity during the first three months of the pandemic, with losses stabilizing after June, 2020, but decreasing again from October to December 2020,” stated the team.
The study analyzed the number of transplants performed in each country by the end of last year, beginning from the point in the year when only 100 Covid cases were confirmed.
The figures were then compared with those of the same time one year prior.
The results revealed that the pandemic had a variable impact among certain countries:
In Canada, the 9.86% decrease accounted for 227 fewer transplants, while in Japan, the 66.71% drop resulted in 1,413 fewer transplants.
Kidney transplants were some of the most affected procedures, with a cumulative decrease of 19.14% across all countries, accounting for 8,560 fewer transplants.
The team explained that the phenomenon was likely a result of the delayed life-saving nature of the surgery and the likelihood of postponing procedures.
“The data also suggests living transplants saw a greater decline that those from deceased donors, with the researchers noting there may have been additional logistical and ethical difficulties as well as concerns around exposing living donors to Covid in hospitals. In some areas, living donor kidney and liver transplantation ceased,” mentioned the team.
