BACKGROUND There are many patients awaiting liver transplantation with only few donors providing the organ. The Child-Turcotte-Pugh score (CTP) and the Model for End stage Liver Disease (MELD) are the most common scores for prioritizing patients on waiting lists. In this study, we compared the ability of these scores to predict mortality or removal from the waiting list due to poor medical cond...

In many settings, randomly arriving objects are offered successively to agents according to their fixed order in a waiting list. Though it is costly to wait, an agent may prefer to decline an offered object in order to wait for a better one (e.g. as in perhaps the most significant of such environments, the assignment of donor organs to queued patients). We consider the welfare consequences of i...

Background: Anxiety is one the main problems of patients on waiting list for endoscopic procedures. Previous studies have indicated adverse effects of anxiety on these patients. Aim: to determine the effect of sound therapy on the anxiety and blood pressure of patients on waiting list for endoscopy. Methods: This was a randomized clinical trial, in which 124 patients on waiting list for endosco...

Although the risk for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is lower after transplantation than on the waiting list, this risk may vary by patient population and may be different early versus late after transplantation. Risk factors for AMI were examined among 53,297 Medicare beneficiaries who were placed on the deceased-donor waiting list in 1995 to 2002. Early (3 mo) effects ...

OBJECTIVE To examine the impact of the Model for End-stage Liver Disease (MELD) on waiting list mortality. DESIGN Interrupted time series with a nominal inception point of the intervention on February 27, 2002. SETTING United Network for Organ Sharing Standard Transplant Analysis and Research file data from March 1, 1999, to July 30, 2004. PARTICIPANTS All adult candidates on the waiting ...

BACKGROUND Prioritization of waiting lists for elective surgery represents a major issue in public systems in view of the fact that patients often suffer from consequences of long waiting times. In addition, administrative and standardized data on waiting lists are generally lacking in Italy, where no detailed national reports are available. This is true although since 2002 the National Governm...

This paper analyzes the main policy initiatives for improving waiting lists in health care. The authors begin by describing strategies to reduce either waiting time or length of the list. They distinguish between demand-side and supply-side strategies. They proceed to discuss policies for improving the "quality" of waiting time. For each policy, they present both the expected effect and the ind...