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2022 Abstracts

Some effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on kidney transplantation in 30 countries

Presenters: Bryson Edwards
Authors: Bryson Edwards, Jeffrey Goddard, Samuel Lewis, Islam Mohammad, Ruhul Kuddus
Faculty Advisor: Ruhul Kuddus
Institution: Utah Valley University

The Coronavirus pandemic has affected organ transplantation in unprecedented ways. Although the pandemic effects are global, some countries have been affected disproportionately. We investigated kidney transplantations during the pandemic (2020) compared to four years (2016-2019) before the pandemic in 30 countries to examine if the socioeconomic conditions affected kidney transplantation. We got kidney transplantation data from the Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation (GODT) database and national GDP per capita data from Word Trend Plus Database. We predicted the kidney transplantation (i.e., cases) for 2020 using the Neural Network forecast method and then compared those predicted outcomes with the actual cases using the nonparametric method-Wilcoxon signed-rank. With cluster analysis based on per capita GDP, we found three groups of countries: Group A-Australia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the USA; Group B- Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Slovenia, South Korea, and United Kingdom; and Group 3- Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, Bulgaria, PR China, Croatia, Iran, Mexico, Pakistan, Romania, Russia, and Turkey. Compared to the previous four years, cases in 2020 declined in all countries except Sweden. However, in Group A, the effect of Covid-19 on cases wasn’t statistically significant. This is remarkable because the United States has suffered the 13thhighest COVID-19 case-fatality ratio/100,000 population, it has not significantly affected kidney transplantation. In Groups 2, and 3, the declines are found to be statistically significant. The median number of kidney transplantation in Groups 2 and 3 has decreased significantly due to COVID-19.Other infra-structures in addition to socioeconomic status and response to the COVID-19 pandemic have affected kidney transplantation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further analyses are needed to predict the effects of a pandemic and reduce its impact on other life-saving medical interventions such as organ transplantation.