• J. Heart Lung Transplant. · Dec 2011

    Comparative Study

    Marital status improves survival after orthotopic heart transplantation.

    • Vernissia Tam, George J Arnaoutakis, Timothy J George, Stuart D Russell, Christian A Merlo, John V Conte, William A Baumgartner, and Ashish S Shah.
    • Division of Cardiac Surgery, The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
    • J. Heart Lung Transplant. 2011 Dec 1; 30 (12): 1389-94.

    BackgroundLarge national registries lack information on social support, which is increasingly recognized as an important factor associated with improved outcomes after solid-organ transplantation. We examined our institutional database to identify social factors associated with improved outcomes after orthotopic heart transplantation (OHT).MethodsOutcomes of OHT patients from 1995 to 2010 at our institution were retrospectively reviewed. Clinical data and social information were extracted from medical records. Patients were stratified by marital status at time of OHT listing. The examined outcome was 5-year survival, excluding deaths within 60 days, modeled using the Kaplan-Meier method. A Cox multivariable hazard regression model was constructed to assess the effect on 5-year survival.ResultsOf 260 OHT recipients, 176 (68%) were men. Mean age was 49 ± 12 years and mean body mass index was 26.8 ± 5.0 kg/m(2). At the time of OHT listing, 175 patients (68%) were married. Before OHT, 25% were supported with ventricular assist devices and 17% were in the intensive care unit. Conditional Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed improved 5-year survival for married patients (84%) compared with unmarried patients (69%). After risk-adjustment with Cox analysis, being married improved 5-year survival (hazard ratio [HR], 0.47; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.23-0.97; p = 0.042) and also improved 1-year survival (p = 0.02). Other social support variables (children, grandchildren, living arrangements, education, race, employment status) were not associated with mortality.ConclusionsMarried patients have improved survival after OHT compared with unmarried patients. Being married confers a powerful 5-year survival advantage after OHT. This benefit appears mediated by an improvement in survival during the first post-transplant year.Copyright © 2011 International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…