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The Great Need for Lifesaving Organ Donations

Normally More Than 100,000 Patients Are Waiting for Organ Transplant

Jan 10, 2009 Carroll Trosclair

Millions of Americans volunteer organs for transplants, but thousands of patients still die every year for lack of a replacement kidney, liver, pancreas, heart or lung.

As usual, there were more than 100,000 patients in the United States waiting for donated transplant organs at the start of 2009. Thousands of them would not live long enough to receive one, although millions of Americans have volunteered their organs upon their own death.

The problem, according to Lana Stevens of the Louisiana Organ Procurement Agency, is that less than three percent of those volunteered organs will ever reach the transplant stage. They won’t be used for a variety of reasons that complicate the organ transplant process in the United States.

According to the national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN):

More than 78,000 patients, about 78 percent, waiting for transplants in early 2009 were waiting for replacement kidneys.
Nearly 16,000, about 16 percent, of the patients were waiting for donated livers.
More than 2700 were waiting for replacement hearts.

The remainder of the 100,000-plus were waiting for a pancreas or lung. Some needed both a kidney and pancreas. Others needed both a heart and lung transplant.

Healthy Enough for Transplant Surgery

The above numbers include only patients who have been qualified to receive a transplant. Many patients with diseased organs are not healthy enough for transplant surgery because of cancer, cardiovascular problems or serious infections and are never placed on the official waiting list.

OPTN reports that 23,286 transplants were performed in the United States in the first 10 months of 2008, which was about on track to match the 28,000 average of the previous three years. OPTN began keeping the totals in 1988, when it counted 12,623. The total since then is expected to reach about a half million in 2010.

More than 18,000 of the 2008 transplanted organs came from deceased donors. More than 5,000 came from living donors.

From 2000 through 2006, the last year that such data is available, more than 7,000 patients per year died while waiting for organ donations, bringing the seven year total to nearly 50,000 deaths. Some are removed from the list because they are no longer healthy enough to undergo the surgery.

National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Clearinghouse

In most states, when Americans indicate they want to donate their organs upon death, a small red heart can be placed on their drivers’ licenses to alert medical and law enforcement people of the availability of their organs. Those donations run into the millions across the nation, but they have never been sufficient because so many organs are lost or cannot be used. The situation worsens each year as the number of needed organs increases and the number of donations remain steady.

Many volunteered organs are never used for medical reasons, such as the lack of compatibility between the recipient’s and the donor’s blood types. The National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Clearinghouse (NKUDIC) says another major reason many organs are never used as intended is that the family members are not aware of the donor’s wishes at the time of death.

That’s why the organ procurement agencies across the nation encourage donors to not only obtain organ donor cards and to have the donor identification placed on their drivers’ licenses, but also to make sure their families are aware of their wishes.

References:

Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (optn.org)
National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Clearinghouse (NKUDIC) (kidney.niddk.nih.gov)

The copyright of the article The Great Need for Lifesaving Organ Donations in General Medicine is owned by Carroll Trosclair. Permission to republish The Great Need for Lifesaving Organ Donations in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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Jan 17, 2009 3:32 PM

Guest :

I am conducting a quick poll, trying to understand the challenges that patients have when faced with decisions on organ transplants. I created a short (6 question) online survey at: <a href="http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=f_2b3YnTItZx9ACmKLG_2fSerA _3d_3d">http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=f_2b3YnTItZx9ACmKLG_2 fSerA_3d_3d</a>

I am collecting as many responses as possible in a short period of time. I will need to close the survey on Feb 1, 2009. If you or anyone you know has ever had to face the difficult choice in deciding on an organ transplant clinic, please take my short survey, and share with me and others in your experience!

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