Balancing rejection and infection with respect to age, race, and gender: Clues acquired from 17 years of cardiac transplantation data

These data show that evolving immunosuppressive strategies have successfully reduced rejection and infection frequencies, and those patients transplanted at 30 to 60 years of age have the lowest frequency of rejection/infection events. However, individuals transplanted at younger or older ages, especially non-white recipients in the 10- to 30-year age group, experience significantly more infection or rejection. Therefore, programs should increase the level of surveillance in these patients and consider modification of immunosuppressive regimens in order to lower the frequency of infection and rejection events.