§ Mr. Dobsonasked the Secretary of State for Social Services (1) if he will give for each year since 1976 the number of kidney transplants in the National Health Service, the estimated cost of the average kidney transplant in that year and the average period each kidney transplant patient lived after the transplant;
(2) what is the longest period anyone has lived after a kidney transplant in the National Health Service; and what are the mean and modal averages.
§ Mrs. CurrieAccording to data supplied by the United Kingdom transplant service, the number of cadaveric kidney transplants performed in the United Kingdom during the calendar years from 1976 was as follows:
Number 1976 670 1977 779 1978 941 1979 842 1980 988 1981 905 1982 1,070 1983 1,144 1984 1,443 1985 1,334 11986 1,363 1 To end October. A study undertaken in 1981 estimated the cost of a successful kidney transplant at between £5,000 and £5,700 in the year of operation (at 1981 prices). No other reliable financial information is available, but the real cost is likely to have risen because of the introduction of the drug Cyclosporin A, an immunosuppressant which significantly increases graft survival.
I am informed by European Dialysis and Transplant Association that, according to its latest information, a patient was living in 1985 whose implanted kidney had been functioning for 21 years.
Because of the number of variables involved (estimates of survival of patients still living who are on different immunosuppressive regimes, patients who have had more than one transplant, patients with a failed transplant now on dialysis etc.), it is impossible to derive meaningful "average" survival rates, whether the average be the arithmetic mean, the mode, the median, or any other measure.