Computations for a best match strategy for kidney transplantation.
In some cases success or failure of a proposed innovation in transplantation may be better judged if we consider the average survival time of the graft rather than the actuarial survival at a point in time. It is suggested that HLA matching may be an example of such a case and that the possible clinical benefits of modest improvements in matching may have been underestimated. Calculations are made that show that transplanting to the best match available in a pool of 100 patients might increase the expected graft survival time by more than 1 year.