Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on commercial airlines in the United States and implications for the kidney transplant community.
Am J Transplant
; 20(11): 3123-3130, 2020 11.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-733265
ABSTRACT
Many deceased-donor and living-donor kidney transplants (KTs) rely on commercial airlines for transport. However, the coronavirus-19 pandemic has drastically impacted the commercial airline industry. To understand potential pandemic-related disruptions in the transportation network of kidneys across the United States, we used national flight data to compare scheduled flights during the pandemic vs 1-year earlier, focusing on Organ Procurement Organization (OPO) pairs between which kidneys historically most likely traveled by direct flight (High Volume by direct Air transport OPO Pairs, HVA-OPs). Across the United States, there were 39% fewer flights in April 2020 vs April 2019. Specific to the kidney transportation network, there were 65.1% fewer flights between HVA-OPs, with considerable OPO-level variation (interquartile range [IQR] 54.7%-75.3%; range 0%-100%). This translated to a drop in median number of flights between HVA-OPs from 112 flights/wk in April 2019 to 34 in April 2020 (P < .001), and a rise in wait time between scheduled flights from 1.5 hours in April 2019 (IQR 0.76-3.3) to 4.9 hours in April 2020 (IQR 2.6-11.2; P < .001). Fewer flights and longer wait times can impact logistics as well as cold ischemia time; our findings motivate an exploration of creative approaches to KT transport as the impact of this pandemic on the airline industry evolves.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Tissue Donors
/
Tissue and Organ Procurement
/
Aircraft
/
Kidney Transplantation
/
Renal Insufficiency
/
Pandemics
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
Limits:
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Country/Region as subject:
North America
Language:
English
Journal:
Am J Transplant
Journal subject:
Transplantation
Year:
2020
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Ajt.16284
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