Few adults use primary care after kidney transplant
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Key takeaways:
- Of more than 800 kidney transplant recipients, 25% saw a primary care provider within 3 years.
- Women, Black and Hispanic recipients and those with diabetes were more likely to use primary care.
SAN DIEGO — Nearly 75% of kidney transplant recipients at a U.S. hospital who survived at least 1 year did not see a primary care provider in the years following the procedure, according to study data.
Long “Anna” Qian, MD, a nephrology fellow at Yale School of Medicine, and colleagues analyzed data from medical records from 819 patients who received a single-organ kidney transplant at Yale New Haven Hospital from Jan. 1, 2016, to March 1, 2020, and survived at least 1 year. Black and Hispanic patients made up 30% and 15% of the cohort, respectively, 30% were women, median age was 54 years, 98.41% had hypertension and 47.62% had diabetes. Median follow-up was 3 years.
After transplant, 25.4% of the kidney recipients saw a PCP, according to the researchers. Women were more likely than not to use primary care — 44.71% of those who saw a PCP were women and 35.68% of those who did not were women. Similarly, recipients more likely than not to use primary care identified as Black (37.5% of those who saw a PCP and 27.66% of those who did not) or Hispanic (18.27% and 13.91%, respectively) and had diabetes (56.73% and 44.52%, respectively).
“We found that patients who saw a PCP were more likely to have had two or more LDL or HbA1c values within target range ... and were more likely to have received a statin prescription. However, we did not find any difference in ‘hard’ clinical outcomes, such as graft loss, mortality or hospitalization rates,” Qian told Healio.
“Since we found that primary care provider visits improve certain health quality metrics, this suggests that seeing a PCP is beneficial for kidney transplant recipients. Our findings may provide the basis for systematic PCP referral efforts that transplant programs could consider implementing,” she said.
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Qian L, et al. TH-PO737. Presented at: ASN Kidney Week; Oct. 24-27, 2024; San Diego.
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