Tag Archives: immigrant

Surprised This Was Published: Liver Transplantation in Undocumented Immigrants

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I was keenly interested in a recent study: BP Lee, NA. Terrault. Liver Transplantation in Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States. Hepatology 2020; 71: 1802-12.  Given the potential for causing a political firestorm, I was surprised it was published.

Definitions: “Unauthorized immigrants, also termed illegal aliens in US federal statures are…all foreign-born non-citizens who are not legal residents.”  Since March 2012, UNOS has required transplant centers to record citizenship…”primarily to better understand transplant tourism.” The authors excluded international transplant tourists in their cohort.

Key findings: 

  • 116 of 43,192 (0.4%) liver transplant (LT) recipients were unauthorized immigrants
  • The majority were from Mexico (52%).  Others came from Guatemala (7%), China (6%), El Salvador (5%) and India (5%).
  • Unauthorized immigrant recipients had a similar risk of graft failure (sHR 0.74) and death (sHR 0.68), though at time of LT, there was higher disease severity (higher MELD scores and increased need for renal replacement therapy).
  • Most LTs for unauthorized immigrants took place in California (47%) and New York (18%).  Texas (3%) and Florida (4%) had a lower proportion of LTs for unauthorized immigrants based on population distribution.
  • The authors note that unauthorized immigrants are different that transplant tourists  –they pay social security tax/other taxes and contribute to organ donation (~3% of donated organs) whereas transplant tourists do not.
  • The authors note that unauthorized immigrant LTs were less than half the number of transplant tourist LTs; the later LT recipients are commonly individuals from Persian Gulf countries.
  • Current federal law mandates that LT be distributed based on “established medical criteria” which does not suggest a “tiered allocation system by citizenship.”  Almost half of the unauthorized immigrant LTs were covered by Medicaid.

My take: Unauthorized immigrants are underrepresented as LT recipients compared to their total population distribution in the U.S.  This likely is due to a number of barriers.  Interestingly, this population is not underrepresented when it comes to organ donation.

 

America Needs Immigrant (Doctors)

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While anti-immigrant sentiment has become more widespread among many, in medicine it is clear that immigrant physicians play an important role.  This is discussed in a recent NY Times article: Why America Needs Foreign Medical Graduates

The key points:

  1. Foreign medical graduates help fill residency training positions that would otherwise be left vacant.  Their availability helps many hospitals operate.
  2. Foreign medical graduates disproportionately take positions in primary care, accounting for approximately 40% of primary care physicians.
  3. There is evidence that the care of foreign medical graduates is at least as good as physicians who received their medical degrees in the U.S.

An excerpt:

The American system relies to a surprising extent on foreign medical graduates, most of whom are citizens of other countries when they arrive. By any objective standard, the United States trains far too few physicians to care for all the patients who need them. We rank toward the bottom of developed nations with respect to medical graduates per population…

A 2015 study found that almost a quarter of residents across all fields, and more than a third of residents in subspecialist programs, were foreign medical graduates…

 About a quarter of all doctors in the United States are foreign medical graduates.

My take: Physicians from other countries improve the health of our entire country.  In addition, many physicians who train in the U.S. return abroad and help improve health in their home countries.

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