Living donation provides best option for those in need of transplant

[Clark]

http://www.uofmmedicalcenter.org/ProviderUpdate/SolidOrganTransplant/Livingdonationprovidesbestoptionforthoseinneedoftransplant/index.htm

Living donation provides best option for those in need of transplant

In the United States more than 95,000 people are on the waiting list for a kidney transplant and each day, about 12 of those die. About 17,000 people are waiting for a liver – with some 9,000 added to the waiting list annually. About 1,400 die waiting each year. These numbers are staggering because while we have the world-class physicians, tools and technology in place to perform more transplants, we don’t have the organs.

At the Transplant Center at University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview, we are passionately committed to finding ways to bridge this formidable gap. Data from the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network (OPTN) shows that there is an increasing gap in living organ donations. For example, living liver donors decreased from 524 in 2001 to 282 donors in 2010, down by almost half. There is no doubt that our nation has a critical organ donation shortage.

Patients on the organ donation waiting list will most likely be on it for many years before they are either at the top of the list, are simply too sick to undergo surgery or die from organ failure. By the time they receive a transplant, their quality of life is seriously diminished. Meanwhile, those at the onset of organ failure usually still have a good quality of life that could be preserved with a more timely organ transplant. Living donor transplants often makes this viable.

As colleagues, we need to find a way to educate our patients and communities on the need for living organ donors. That education must be respectful of ethical, legal and financial mores, and recognize that, understandably, not everyone is wired to give up an organ.

Promoting living organ donation is not an easy task. I am asking you, my colleagues, to help strategize ways in which to approach people about the need for organs without pushing. We need to discuss how organs can be equitably allocated without upsetting the fine balance between social and medical issues. I challenge us to find a way to keep our transplant physicians as busy as we can improving the quality of life for transplant patients.

Dr. Pruett is the Chief of Transplantation at University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview, and University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital.