Organ Failure and Transplantation
There are more than 300,000 people alive today in the U.S. because they are receiving
ongoing replacement treatment for their failed kidneys, hearts, livers, or other organs.
Dialysis is the most common treatment for kidney failure while transplantation is
a common treatment for liver, heart, and also kidney failure. Data are available for
nearly all patients for many aspects of these diseases due to the availability of
federal health insurance for kidney failure patients in the U.S. and the use of a
national organ-sharing system for all transplanted organs in the U.S. These data systems
track many aspects of patient condition, treatment methods, outcomes, and costs through
the course of these diseases. Several national studies on organ failure are based
at the University of Michigan with collaborative work carried out by the Departments
of Biostatistics, Internal Medicine, Surgery, Epidemiology, and Health Management
and Policy. The study of population-based data, rather than controlled experimental
outcomes, requires careful attention to research design. Many opportunities exist
for collaborative efforts to develop statistical methods to deal with these issues
in longitudinal data analyses.
Faculty: B. Gillespie, P. Han, K. He, J. Kang, Y. Li,nbsp;P. Song, W. Ye, M. Zhang