Re: Dealing with back problems


"Mike Fleming" <{mike}@tauzero.co.uk> wrote in message
news:vmapu2hb79uf76hurlc0gj4baps0lnvkdt@xxxxxxxxxx
In article <AjJGh.2580$X6.1176@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "ptooner"
<nobody@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Strangely enough, you make a good point. However, for the foreseeable
future only a small fraction of those needing kidney transplants will get
them. The technology is limited and obscenely expensive. So, how would
you
suggest we decide who gets the transplant and who doesn't?

In the UK, the rather simple system is to let nature decide - if a
kidney becomes available, tissue matching determines the most
appropriate recipient.

The technology might be obscenely expensive and limited in the US, in
the UK it's rather cheaper (somewhere round $40k for a transplant and
$10k p/a for immunosuppression). I could always ask my future
sister-in-law for more information, she runs a renal unit at a local
hospital.

http://www.uktransplant.org.uk/ukt/newsroom/fact_sheets/cost_effectiveness_of_transplantation.jsp

--
Mike Fleming

I don't want to keep this alive, but I will say that I was mistaken about
pricing. It seems that according to your article cited above dialysis in
the UK costs "The average cost of dialysis is £30,800 per patient per year"
about $60k USD annually. In the US ""The cost of kidney dialysis averages
about $44,000 per year per patient, using 1993 figures." in the US "The
average cost for the transplant patients in our study, including the
transplant surgery and medical care for the first year following surgery was
$89,939" http://www.umm.edu/news/releases/kidcost.htm Now I have tried
fairly hard, and I can't find what it costs in the UK. Your $40k reference
says "excluding UK Transplant costs". I have no idea what that means, but I
find it hard to believe it would be half price for the transplant if we're
comparing apples to apples. Anyway, I'll drop this as inappropriate to a
music ng.
Gerry


.

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