HealthDay Reports: Kidney Transplant Patients at High Risk of Fatal COVID-19 — Study
A new study found a very high early mortality among kidney transplant recipients with COVID-19: 28% at three weeks, as compared with the reported 1% to 5% mortality among patients with COVID-19 in the general population.
Kidney Transplant Patients at High Risk of Fatal COVID-19: Study
TUESDAY, May 5, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Because people who receive a donor kidney are often on immune-suppressing medications, they're at extremely high risk of dying if COVID-19 strikes, a new report warns.
The study, from doctors at Montefiore Medical Center in hard-hit New York City, looked at outcomes for 36 kidney transplant patients diagnosed with COVID-19 between March 16 and April 1.
Nearly a third of these patients died from their infection with the new coronavirus, and in most cases COVID-19 worsened rapidly, according to a team of Montefiore physicians led by Dr. Enver Akalin.
Thirty-nine percent of patients needed to be put on a mechanical ventilator, and nearly two-thirds (64%) of those ventilated patients died.
"Our results show a very high early mortality among kidney transplant recipients with COVID-19 -- 28% at three weeks as compared with the reported 1% to 5% mortality among patients with COVID-19 in the general population," the doctors wrote in a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.