Thanks to a new system adopted in 2002 and called MELD Score System ((Model for End-Stage Liver Disease), racial disparities in liver transplant has been eliminated, according to a new study in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

Prior to 2002, livers were allocated based on how long a patient had spent on an official waiting list. Such a procedure often ended in sicker patients being passed over for livers in favour of other patients who had waited longer. Therefore, blacks on the organ lists had a 50 percent greater chance of dying or becoming too ill for a liver transplant. It is known that black patients join waiting lists when they are sicker.

The new system appears to have eliminated this issue. Time on the waiting list is not a criterion anymore in liver transplant. The new system bases on laboratory tests, which can tell whether a patient is in more need for a liver transplant than another no matter his time on the list. This criterion made chances of black and white patients for a liver transplant equal, the study showed.

“Post-MELD, the disparity between black and whites went away. The sickest patients get the organs,” said Dr. Cynthia A. Moylan, lead author of the study and a transplant hepatology fellow at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.

However, the study found a new disparity, between men and women. For women, MELD did not mean an improvement. The study found women have a 30 percent greater chance of dying or becoming too sick for transplant with the new scoring system. This gender difference was not significant before.

At present, the number of Americans waiting for a new liver tops 16,000, the United Network for Organ Sharing says. One year following the transplant, overall survival rates go beyond 90 percent.