Expanding Usable Organ Criteria Has Led to Decreased Mortality

According to Jean P. Fisher, Hospitals less finicky about kidneys, newsobserver.com, March 2, 2008:

Deaths among patients awaiting lifesaving kidney transplants fell nationally last year amid rising organ donation and broader use of kidneys that would once have been discarded.***

So-called expanded-criteria donor organs are more likely to fail than kidneys from younger, healthier donors. Traditionally, such organs were considered unsuitable for transplant. But as the gap continues to widen between the number of patients seeking transplants and the number of organs available to them, Stratta and other transplant experts increasingly see them as an untapped resource.***

The supply of kidneys available for transplant has increased nearly 15 percent since the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services established the national collaborative. And experts see signs that increasing the supply of organs is helping save lives.

Many states have also passed laws that allow hospitals to treat the organ donation symbol on a person’s driver’s license as legal consent to donate. North Carolina enacted such a law in October. Before it took effect, families did not always honor loved ones’ wishes to donate organs[.]***

Special thanks to Dave Undis (Founder of LifeSharers) for bringing this article to my attention.