The effect of augmenting OPTN data with external death data on calculating patient survival rates after organ transplantation.

Background: While the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) database contains a rich set of data on United States transplant recipients, follow-up data may be incomplete. It was of interest to determine if augmenting OPTN data with external death data altered patient survival estimates. Methods: Solitary kidney, liver, heart, and lung transplants performed between 1/1/2011-1/31/2013 were queried from the OPTN database. Unadjusted Kaplan-Meier 3-year patient survival rates were computed using 4 nonmutually exclusive augmented datasets: OPTN only, OPTN+verified external deaths, OPTN+verified+unverified external deaths (OPTN+all), and an additional source extending recipient survival time if no death was found in OPTN+all (OPTN+all (Assumed Alive)). Pairwise comparisons were made using unadjusted Cox Proportional Hazards analyses applying Bonferroni adjustments. Results: While differences in patient survival rates across data sources were small (

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