The Influence of Gender on Survival After Heart Transplantation

Because of a shortage of deceased donors, more than one-third of patients die during the waiting period for transplantation. This study was conducted to analyze the influence of gender on survival after heart transplantation. We retrospectively reviewed the recipients after primary orthotopic heart transplantation. According to gender, patients were divided into four groups: male donor to male recipient, male donor to female recipient, female donor to male recipient, and female donor to female recipient. Kaplan-Meier survival curves were plotted with log-rank tests. Cox regression analysis with dummy variables were used to examine the effects of donor gender, recipient gender, and donor-recipient gender combinations on survival after heart transplantation. The data did not show any significant effect of donor gender, recipient gender, or donor-recipient gender combinations on patient survival, using the methods of log-rank test and Cox regression with dummy variables. Based on our results, we concluded that gender was not an important factor in organ allocation.