Employment Status Following Heart Transplantation: Data From the Danish Nationwide Social Service Payment Register During 20 years

Transpl Int. 2024 Apr 17:37:12230. doi: 10.3389/ti.2024.12230. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Most studies on vocational rehabilitation after heart transplantation (HTX) are based on self-reported data. Danish registries include weekly longitudinal information on all public transfer payments. We intended to describe 20-year trends in employment status for the Danish heart-transplant recipients, and examine the influence of multimorbidity and socioeconomic position (SEP). Linking registry and Scandiatransplant data (1994-2018), we conducted a study in recipients of working age (19-63 years). The cohort contained 492 recipients (79% males) and the median (IQR) age was 52 years (43-57 years). Five years after HTX, 30% of the survived recipients participated on the labor market; 9% were in a flexible job with reduced health-related working capacity. Moreover, 60% were retired and 10% eligible for labor market participation were unemployed. Recipients with multimorbidity had a higher age and a lower prevalence of employment. Five years after HTX, characteristics of recipients with labor market participation were: living alone (27%) versus cohabitation (73%); low (36%) versus medium-high (64%) educational level; low (13%) or medium-high (87%) income group. Heart-transplant recipients with multimorbidity have a higher age and a lower prevalence of employment. Socioeconomically disadvantaged recipients had a lower prevalence of labor market participation, despite being younger compared with the socioeconomically advantaged.

Keywords: heart transplantation; labor market participation; multimorbidity; public transfer payments; socioeconomic position.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Denmark
  • Employment* / statistics & numerical data
  • Female
  • Heart Transplantation*
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Multimorbidity
  • Registries*
  • Rehabilitation, Vocational / statistics & numerical data
  • Social Work
  • Socioeconomic Factors
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This study was supported by grants from The Karen Elise Jensen Foundation (July 2019) and The Helse Foundation (20-B-0155). The sponsors had no role in study design, data collection, analysis, or interpretation of the data, writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.