Exploring attitudes toward xenotransplantation: A scoping review of healthcare workers, healthcare students, and kidney patients

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundRecent advances mean that formal clinical trials of solid organ xenotransplantation are increasingly likely to begin and patients requiring a kidney transplant could be the first participants. Healthcare workers and healthcare students constitute the current and future workforce that will influence public opinion of xenotransplantation. The attitudes of these populations are important to consider before recruitment for formal clinical trials begins.MethodsThis scoping review was reported according to the PRISMA extensions for scoping reviews checklist and the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews. The Scopus, PubMed, and ScienceDirect databases were searched to identify articles that studied the attitudes of healthcare workers, healthcare students, or kidney patients toward xenotransplantation.ResultsThe search generated 816 articles, of which 27 met the eligibility criteria. The studies were conducted in 14 different countries on five different continents. Participants from the 27 studies totaled 29,836—this was constituted of 6,223 (21%) healthcare workers, 21,067 (71%) healthcare students, and 2,546 (8%) kidney patients. All three groups had an overall positive attitude toward xenotransplantation. However, in studies where participants were asked to consider xenotransplantation when the risks and results were not equal to allotransplantation—the overall attitude switched from positive to negative. The results also found that Spanish‐speaking populations expressed more favorable views toward xenotransplantation compared to English‐speaking populations.ConclusionThe results of this review suggest that while attitudes of the three groups toward xenotransplantation are—on the face of it—positive, this positivity deteriorates when the risks and outcomes are framed in more clinically realistic terms. Only formal clinical trials can determine how the risks and outcomes of xenotransplantation compare to allotransplantation.