February 5, 2021
Young Black transplant recipients are less likely to have the financial and social resources they need to fully recover after surgery.
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Doctors have long known that Black patients have worse outcomes after heart transplants than members of other racial groups, but a new study has shed light on exactly which segment of the population is skewing the numbers. It turns out that older Black heart transplant patients have outcomes similar to non-Black patients, but young Black adults fare much worse.
In fact, Black patients in the 18–30 age bracket are twice as likely to die in the first year after their transplant, and 1.5 times as likely to die five years post-transplant, according to the paper, which was published February 2021 in the journal