Use of Interpreters for non-native English speaking Kidney Allograft Recipients and outcomes after Kidney Transplantation

Sanna Tahir, Holly Gillott, Francesca Jackson Spence, Jay Nath, Jemma Mytton, Felicity Evison and Adnan Sharif*

Background: Language barriers are associated with worse health outcomes in the general population but  data  in  kidney  transplantation  is  lacking.  This  study  tested  the  hypothesis  that  non-native  English speakers  using  interpreters  have  poorer  outcomes  after  kidney  transplantation  compared  to  native English speakers.

Methods:  A  single-center  retrospective  study  analyzing  all  kidney  allograft  recipients  transplanted  between   2007-2015,   with   data   linkage   between   various   electronic   patient   records   to   create comprehensive database.

Results: Data was extracted for 1,140 patients, with median follow up 4.4 years’ post-transplantation. Ethnicity  breakdown  was;  Caucasian  (72.1%),  black  (5.5%),  south  Asian  (17.6%)  and  other 4.7%). Interpreters had been requested for 40 kidney allograft recipients, with the commonest language required being Urdu/Punjabi (n=25). Patients requiring interpreting services were more likely to be of south Asian ethnicity (80.0% of users versus 15.4% of non-users, p<0.001) and female (60.0% of users versus 39.5% of non-users, p=0.008). Recipients using versus not using interpreters had less kidney allograft rejection (2.5% versus 14.8% respectively, p=0.014). There was no difference between groups for development of post-transplant diabetes, cardiac events, cerebrovascular accidents, and cancer or patient/graft survival.

Keywords:

Published on: Jun 1, 2017 Pages: 20-25

Full Text PDF Full Text HTML DOI: 10.17352/2455-5495.000021
CrossMark Publons Harvard Library HOLLIS Search IT Semantic Scholar Get Citation Base Search Scilit OAI-PMH ResearchGate Academic Microsoft GrowKudos Universite de Paris UW Libraries SJSU King Library SJSU King Library NUS Library McGill DET KGL BIBLiOTEK JCU Discovery Universidad De Lima WorldCat VU on WorldCat