Analysing the benefits of major organ transplants

Researcher Natalie Staplin has been looking into the statistics of a person’s life expectancy from remaining on the waiting list or having a transplant.

“A shortage of donor organs means not everybody on the waiting list will get a transplant, therefore it is important to understand the benefit to a patient from having a transplant or not,” said Natalie.

“Historically statistics have been based on the survival rates of people on the waiting lists compared to how long people live who have had a transplant. But usually it is the people who are the most ill that have the transplants so the results can become biased.

“What I have been looking at is how to take account of this extra information and come up with a better way of estimating the survival benefits of transplantation and the factors that will affect this,” she said.

Natalie is now developing a computer programme so that the NHS can apply her methods. She is hoping that it will have a wider medical impact as the same principles can be used with other major organ transplants such as heart or kidney.

Natalie has been supervised in her work by Dr Alan Kimber , Reader in Mathematics and Dave Collett, Visiting Professor at S3RI.

“We have been extremely impressed with the work that Natalie has done in this field,” said Alan.

“Originally she was funded for three years but her sponsor, NHS Blood and Transplant, has been so impressed with her work that it has paid for her to continue her developments for another six months.”

Natalie was also recently awarded the SAS Award for best PhD student in Statistics within the University of Southampton.

The annual award, donated by the business analytics and business intelligence software company SAS, is given to the most outstanding Statistics student in Mathematics, Social Statistics and Medicine.

Natalie won the accolade for her excellence in research and also for her good all-round contribution to S3RI.