More Hispanics die waiting for a heart transplant

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Hispanic patients in need of a heart transplant are 50 percent more likely to die before they get one than white patients, according to new research. And although that wasn’t the case for black transplant patients in the study, the results suggest they have a higher chance of dying soon after they’ve received a donor heart than whites. “All of us have recognized that ethnicity and race play a role in outcomes,” said Dr. Ashish Shah, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, who was not involved in this research. …