ORGAN TRANSPLANT IN USA SKYROCKETS 20% IN FIVE YEARS

By Susan Scutti

Organ transplants performed in the United States reached a record high during 2016, for the fourth year in a row, according to preliminary data from the United Network for Organ Sharing.

During 2016, there were 33,606 transplants, an 8.5% increase over 2015 and up 19.8% since 2012. This growth can be mostly attributed to an expanding number of deceased donors.

About 82% (or 27,628) of the transplants involved organs from deceased donors, who often provide multiple organs. The remaining 18% (or 5,978) were performed with organs from living donors.

There have been fewer disqualifications of deceased donations over time, explained Dr. David Klassen, chief medical officer of the organ sharing network, which serves under federal contract and brings together medical professionals, transplant recipients and donor families.

No uniform criteria for donations or enforced guidelines exist across the procurement and donation network, Klassen said. Instead, donation and transplant professionals use their best judgment to evaluate whether each donated organ will be safe for a patient, such as whether an elderly deceased adult would be a safe donor.

Another source of donor organs is rooted in the opioid epidemic sweeping the nation.

"The number of donors who died of overdoses increased over the past year," Klassen said. The percentage of donors who have died from overdoses is approaching 25% of the donor population in some parts of the country, he said.

Increased donation as a result of drug overdoses is not a trend anyone wants to see continue, he said but there's still potential for increasing the number of donors.

"The transplant community is pretty energized in terms of trying to make use of all donors of potential," Klassen said.

The increase in life-saving organ transplants is due in part to improvements made throughout the network, which includes individual organ banks, officially known as organ procurement organizations, and hospitals where transplant surgeries occur.

"To make it all work takes coordinated effort," Klassen said.

Currently, 58 organ banks of varying size and geographic range operate across the nation, all working toward the same goal.

"One of the areas we're very interested in is looking at the regulatory and oversight structure that surrounds transplant programs," Klassen said. Both the organ donation network and the government itself are "trying to remove any disincentives that programs have for being able to maximize donor potential." He admits, though, that "those changes could be kind of slow to come."

One such disincentive is that organ procurement organizations are evaluated on various metrics that may be a bit too stringent. One of these metrics is patient and graft survival, said Klassen. Currently, over 95% of patients and about 95% or slightly fewer of transplanted kidneys survive.

"The results are really excellent," Klassen said. "But there's a perception that the standards are so tight that, in fact, programs become overly caution to the disadvantage of people on the waiting list."