Black and Hispanic patients with a serious liver-scarring condition are less likely to receive transplants than their White peers in the US, according to researchers arguing for greater equity in providing the life-saving procedure.

Even after improvements from 2009 to 2018, Black people hospitalized for the liver ailment, cirrhosis, were only about two-thirds as likely to get transplants as White patients, according to the analysis of a national database of hospital stays. For Hispanic patients, the gap widened over the 10-year period, making them now three-quarters as likely to receive the organs as their White counterparts.