Gender Issues and Drug Use Pattern in Kidney Transplantation: Experience of a Medical Center in Southern Taiwan

Abstract

Gender issues in clinical transplantation affect outcomes at many levels beyond immunologic concerns; for example, immunosuppressive drugs may influence hormone levels. Most immunosuppressive agents are categorized as “C” by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, meaning that risks can not be excluded. To optimize renal allograft survival is crucially important in Taiwan because of the limited resources to treat irreversible renal failure. This survey sought to investigate which gender undergoing renal transplantation required greater health care expenditures, using the records of a medical center in Southern Taiwan. We analyzed not only the number of female and male recipients, but also the health care costs. All of the recipients were categorized into 4 groups based on gender and age (≤40 vs >40 years). The prescribing patterns in this study were separated into 2 groups by gender to examine differences. From 2000 to 2008, a total of 145 outpatient visits and 8,446 prescriptions met the criteria of renal transplant cases. We also computed the gender proportion of our patients. In conclusion, gender did not influence graft recipient expenditures in our hospital.