By LORA HINES
The Press-Enterprise
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Medical experts believe expansion of living donor programs could reduce waits for kidney transplant patients.
Potential donors who aren't matches for loved ones in need of kidneys could agree to donate to strangers, increasing the pool of kidneys available for transplant patients.
"The best kidney comes from a living donor," said Dr. Pedro Baron, who performs kidney transplants at Loma Linda University Medical Center. "The quality of the organ is better," he said.
Nearly 87,400 people are waiting for kidneys at a time when the rates of transplants from living and deceased donors have remained fairly steady, hovering between 16,000 and 17,000 per year since 2004.
Transplant centers need more living donors because there aren't enough acceptable dead donors to help everyone who needs a kidney. Less than 1 percent of all deceased people can be organ donors because of restrictions surrounding the process.
Potential donors usually are eliminated because of diseases or causes of death that damage organs. As a result, many deceased donations come from people declared brain dead, said Bryan Stewart, spokesman for OneLegacy, the federally designated organ recovery agency that serves the Inland area.
His organization arranges transplants and seeks permission from families to use deceased people's organs for transplant.
Brain deaths account for 15,000 to 20,000 deaths a year. Even if all those people and their families had consented to organ donation, it wouldn't be enough to help everyone waiting for a kidney, Stewart said.
"Organ donation is extremely rare," he said. "There are very few opportunities to approach families about organ donation."
That's why criteria for acceptable deceased donors have been expanded to increase transplant numbers. Deceased donors of advanced age with a history of high blood pressure, some kidney damage or who died of a stroke might now be considered.
This month, New York City launched a pilot program, expanding potential organ donors to include people who die at home. Donations typically come from people declared dead at hospitals because those facilities are equipped to keep blood and oxygen flowing to organs to maintain viability for harvest.
The New York City program's teams will have 50 minutes from the time a heart stops beating to the time a body must be placed in specially equipped ambulances that create blood circulation.
However, donor expansion efforts could mean little if people's attitudes about donation don't change.
An April 5 survey by the national advocacy group Donate Life America found that 43 percent of people who could register are undecided or don't want to have their organs donated after their deaths.
New York, which has one of the country's lowest donation registration rates, has proposed legislation that would presume that everyone would be an organ donor unless they opted out when they received or renewed driver's licenses and identification cards. Other countries, including France, Italy and Sweden, have such opt-out systems.
Stewart said it would be unfair to impose an opt-out system, considering how many people are opposed to donating organs. His organization approaches families for consent to harvest organs for donation.
"With a three-out-of-10 (organ donation) decline rate, why would you presume anything?" he asked.
Stewart said OneLegacy expands public organ donation knowledge using limited advertising. The organization wants state lawmakers to pass a bill that would require organ donation education in ninth-grade health classes. It also plans to start education programs to help dialysis patients better understand kidney transplants and how to go about finding living donors.
"We want to make more dialysis patients savvy about the transplant process," Stewart said. "The thing about dialysis patients is that they do have time on their hands. They have time to learn. We see that as our mission."
Donor Information
Sources to contact to find out how to become a kidney donor:
The National Kidney Foundation in New York City. 800-622-9010
The United Network for Organ Sharing in Richmond, Va., 888-894-6361
Donate Life California in Sacramento, 866-797-2366
National Kidney Registry in Babylon, N.Y., 800-936-1627
The American Association of Kidney Patients in Tampa, Fla., 800-749-2257
OneLegacy in Los Angeles, 800-338-6112
The Press-Enterprise
Download story podcastMedical experts believe expansion of living donor programs could reduce waits for kidney transplant patients.
Potential donors who aren't matches for loved ones in need of kidneys could agree to donate to strangers, increasing the pool of kidneys available for transplant patients.
"The best kidney comes from a living donor," said Dr. Pedro Baron, who performs kidney transplants at Loma Linda University Medical Center. "The quality of the organ is better," he said.
Nearly 87,400 people are waiting for kidneys at a time when the rates of transplants from living and deceased donors have remained fairly steady, hovering between 16,000 and 17,000 per year since 2004.
Transplant centers need more living donors because there aren't enough acceptable dead donors to help everyone who needs a kidney. Less than 1 percent of all deceased people can be organ donors because of restrictions surrounding the process.
Potential donors usually are eliminated because of diseases or causes of death that damage organs. As a result, many deceased donations come from people declared brain dead, said Bryan Stewart, spokesman for OneLegacy, the federally designated organ recovery agency that serves the Inland area.
His organization arranges transplants and seeks permission from families to use deceased people's organs for transplant.
Brain deaths account for 15,000 to 20,000 deaths a year. Even if all those people and their families had consented to organ donation, it wouldn't be enough to help everyone waiting for a kidney, Stewart said.
"Organ donation is extremely rare," he said. "There are very few opportunities to approach families about organ donation."
That's why criteria for acceptable deceased donors have been expanded to increase transplant numbers. Deceased donors of advanced age with a history of high blood pressure, some kidney damage or who died of a stroke might now be considered.
This month, New York City launched a pilot program, expanding potential organ donors to include people who die at home. Donations typically come from people declared dead at hospitals because those facilities are equipped to keep blood and oxygen flowing to organs to maintain viability for harvest.
The New York City program's teams will have 50 minutes from the time a heart stops beating to the time a body must be placed in specially equipped ambulances that create blood circulation.
However, donor expansion efforts could mean little if people's attitudes about donation don't change.
An April 5 survey by the national advocacy group Donate Life America found that 43 percent of people who could register are undecided or don't want to have their organs donated after their deaths.
New York, which has one of the country's lowest donation registration rates, has proposed legislation that would presume that everyone would be an organ donor unless they opted out when they received or renewed driver's licenses and identification cards. Other countries, including France, Italy and Sweden, have such opt-out systems.
Stewart said it would be unfair to impose an opt-out system, considering how many people are opposed to donating organs. His organization approaches families for consent to harvest organs for donation.
"With a three-out-of-10 (organ donation) decline rate, why would you presume anything?" he asked.
Stewart said OneLegacy expands public organ donation knowledge using limited advertising. The organization wants state lawmakers to pass a bill that would require organ donation education in ninth-grade health classes. It also plans to start education programs to help dialysis patients better understand kidney transplants and how to go about finding living donors.
"We want to make more dialysis patients savvy about the transplant process," Stewart said. "The thing about dialysis patients is that they do have time on their hands. They have time to learn. We see that as our mission."
Donor Information
Sources to contact to find out how to become a kidney donor:
The National Kidney Foundation in New York City. 800-622-9010
The United Network for Organ Sharing in Richmond, Va., 888-894-6361
Donate Life California in Sacramento, 866-797-2366
National Kidney Registry in Babylon, N.Y., 800-936-1627
The American Association of Kidney Patients in Tampa, Fla., 800-749-2257
OneLegacy in Los Angeles, 800-338-6112
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