The study, conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University,
examined medical records from over 20,000 transplant patients
identified as black, white, Hispanic or Asian and found that
survival rates were the same for race-matched and mismatched
donors up to one year after the procedure. This evidence
suggests that donor–recipient race matching will not improve
transplant success in the short term, but it fails to explain
long term differences in survival of African-American transplant
recipients. Five years after heart transplant surgery African-
American patients have a survival rate of 65% compared with
nearly 72% for Hispanics and 75% for whites. The same gap exists
when patients were followed for 10 years after a heart
transplant. The likelihood that an African-American transplant
recipient will survive for 10 years after surgery is 10.8% and
11.4% lower than rates seen in Hispanics and whites
respectively. While race-matching was ruled out as a root cause
for short-term survival differences, other fac