ORLANDO, Fla. — A racially biased formula kept thousands of Black Americans off the kidney transplant waitlist list.
Channel 9 first told you about this last month and showed you how hospitals had to dig through records to credit those impacted.
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The United Network for Organ Sharing helps set transplant policies.
That organization gave hospital systems until January to move people who were disadvantaged by the racially biased formula up the waitlist.
In the months since, thousands of patients learned for the first-time that race ever played a role in their healthcare.
Since hospitals were first told to look at the impact of this formula, The United Network for Organ Sharing has said more than 14,000 black patients across the U.S. were found to have been affected.
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But there’s no way of knowing how many people before this died because they couldn’t get their transplants.
Channel 9 spoke to one man who claims his health got so bad he needed multiple heart surgeries and had to retire early because of this racially biased formula.
Cleveland Holt is one of at least three Americans who has since filed a federal lawsuit because of the racially biased EGFR calculation.
That once widely used formula was used to rate kidney function. But the formula calculated results for black and non-black patients differently.
According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, it “led to a systemic underestimation of kidney disease severity.”
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Medical experts and researchers say it delayed transplants for thousands of black patients.
In Holt’s case, if race had not been included, he would have been listed for a transplant nearly 5 years earlier.
In the complaint filed by Holt’s lawyers at Washington Dreyer and Associates, Holt claims the race-based formula violated his civil rights and caused him serious damage.
According to the lawsuit, as Holt waited for a transplant, his health got so bad he needed multiple heart surgeries and was forced into early retirement.
“If someone was unjustly discriminated against, there should be consequences,” said Holt.
According to the National Kidney Foundation, in 2020 decision makers started looking at taking race out of the EGFR formula, and other medical formulas too.
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“There was a movement in medicine, a broad movement to get away from race-based calculations,” said Dr. Joseph Vassalotti, the chief medical officer for the National Kidney Foundation.
Vassalotti said as the EGFR was being reviewed, 20 other clinical calculations were also being examined across the medical field.
Vassalotti said those formulas are now in various stages of revision.
However, Cleveland Holt believes the damage to his health is already done.
He’ll forever live with the consequences of his delayed transplant, and he points to thousands of others who never had that chance.
“There are folks that went through what I went through, and then some that are still going through it, that did not make it. And if they had a chance to get a kidney transplant, they might be still with us,” said Holt.
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