Experience of Older Adults and Their Family Members in the Kidney Transplant Evaluation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Importance: Transplant can be a valuable treatment option for older adults with kidney failure, and recent initiatives encourage more frequent referral to transplant centers. However, the evaluation process can be challenging, and most older adults do not ultimately receive a kidney. Objective: To elucidate the perspectives and experiences of older adults with advanced kidney disease and their family members regarding the kidney transplant evaluation process. Design, Setting, and Participants: This qualitative study, conducted between December 19, 2022, and February 5, 2024, included adults aged 65 years or older with advanced kidney disease (estimated glomerular filtration rate ≤20 mL/min/1.73 m2, receiving dialysis, or with a functioning kidney transplant) and their family members in Seattle, Washington. Main Outcomes and Measures: Perspectives and experiences of patients and family members, identified through inductive thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews. Results: A total of 26 older adults (16 [61.5%] men; median age, 68 years [range, 65-74 years]) with advanced kidney disease and 7 of their family members (4 [57.1%] women; median age, 65 years [range, 36-75 years]) were interviewed. Three dominant themes pertaining to the kidney transplant evaluation process were identified: (1) committed to transplant, (2) a complex and protracted process, and (3) responsibility without power. Because receiving a kidney was such an important priority, most participants were willing to engage in what could be a demanding process of testing and treatment narrowly focused on this future goal. However, the transplant evaluation could be lengthy, demanding, opaque, and fragmented, and patients often put other aspects of their lives on hold while awaiting an uncertain result. Patients and families often felt personally responsible for navigating and completing the transplant evaluation despite having little power to shape this process. Feeling responsible for the continued progress of a high-stakes evaluation process while remaining dependent on clinical teams and family members for support could strain relationships. Conclusions and Relevance: This qualitative study found that older adults with advanced kidney disease and their family members were highly motivated to receive a kidney transplant but engagement in an evaluation process, over which they had little control, could have far-reaching implications for patients and families. These findings underline the importance of making the transplant evaluation process more transparent and person centered and of helping patients and families who are contemplating or engaged in the process to understand what to expect.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".