Connecting Air Routes and Organ Transplants

Each year nearly 5,000 patients die while waiting for kidney transplants, and yet an estimated 3,500 procured kidneys are discarded

In a study published online July 9, 2021, in the INFORMS journal Management Science, a UT Dallas researcher investigated how introducing new airline routes impacts the sharing of cadaveric kidneys.

“This mismatch between supply and demand of donor organs and the time-sensitive nature of kidney transplantation made us wonder whether better airline logistics infrastructure could help match that supply and demand,” said Dr. Guihua Wang, assistant professor of operations management in the Naveen Jindal School of Management.

Wang and co-authors created a unique sample that tracked the evolution of airline routes connecting all U.S. airports, and kidney transplants between donors and recipients connected by these airports.

The researchers merged monthly air-carrier traffic information from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics and individual-level data for all U.S. kidney transplant candidates, donors and recipients from the United Network for Organ Sharing.

The study estimates that each new airline route led to a 7.3% increase in the number of kidneys sent to U.S. transplant centers. The findings also suggest that introducing new airline routes reduces the discard rate of kidneys.

“An increase in the organ transplant rate, coupled with a decrease in the organ discard rate, means a better use of organs that would otherwise be discarded,” Wang said. “These findings suggest the introduction of new airline routes … helps match supply and demand.”

– Brittany Magelssen