BALTIMORE — Very obese people who need a kidney transplant are far less likely to get one than normal weight people, and when they do, their wait is an average of a year to 18 months longer, a new study found.
The reason seems to be both economic and medical. Very obese people have a greater risk for complications, and the transplant centers often must bear the additional cost of treating those problems.
The study showed that morbidly obese patients — those who average about 100 pounds over their ideal weight — were 44 percent less likely to get a transplant than normal weight patients. Those just slightly less obese were 28 percent less likely to get a transplant, the researchers found.
The results also mean very obese patients are more likely to die; each year about 8 percent of all patients waiting for a transplant die.
The research was based on an analysis of records of 132,353 patients on the national kidney transplant waiting list between 1995 and 2006. The work was published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
