Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Transplant. Jun 24, 2015; 5(2): 38-43
Published online Jun 24, 2015. doi: 10.5500/wjt.v5.i2.38
Changing organ allocation policy for kidney transplantation in the United States
Bhavna Chopra, Kalathil K Sureshkumar
Bhavna Chopra, Kalathil K Sureshkumar, Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, Department of Medicine, Allegheny General Hospital, Pittsburgh, PA 15212, United States
Author contributions: Chopra B contributed to literature search, writing of the manuscript; Sureshkumar KK contributed to literature search, writing of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest: None.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Kalathil K Sureshkumar, MD, FRCP (Glasgow), FASN, Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, Department of Medicine, Allegheny General Hospital, 320 East North Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15212, United States. ksureshk@wpahs.org
Telephone: +1-412-3593319 Fax: +1-412-3594136
Received: January 22, 2015
Peer-review started: January 26, 2015
First decision: February 7, 2015
Revised: February 14, 2015
Accepted: March 16, 2015
Article in press: March 18, 2015
Published online: June 24, 2015
Processing time: 148 Days and 15.2 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: The new kidney allocation system (KAS) was recently implemented in the United States in an attempt to improve the utilization of deceased donor kidneys. A key feature is preferential allocation of best quality organs to wait-list candidates with the longest predictive survival in a concept called longevity matching. Attempts were also made to improve access to kidney transplantation by giving priority points to highly-sensitized recipients and by giving consideration to dialysis vintage. Simulation model has predicted a modest increase in median allograft and patient life-years with the new KAS. Potential limitations and unintended consequences are also discussed in the article.