• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Need for Organs Crucial Despite Many State Donors

Posted on: Saturday, 3 June 2006, 03:00 CDT

By Joseph Turner, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash.

May 22--About half of Washingtonians are willing to donate their hearts, lungs, kidneys and other vital organs to other people if they die.

"Of course, we want it to be higher, but that's still very good," said Jill Steinhaus, executive director of Living Legacy Foundation, the organization that coordinates organ donations among 190 hospitals in Washington, Montana, Alaska and northern Idaho.

Of the state's 6.25 million residents, 3.1 million say they will donate their organs in the event of their deaths.

Although that's an impressive number, it belies the fact that only 1 percent of people who die are suitable candidates for organ recovery. Their manner of death might preclude organ recovery, Steinhaus said.

On any given day, more than 1,200 people in the Northwest region are awaiting an organ transplant. Nationwide, there are 90,000 people on a waiting list.

Half of those on the waiting list will die before they receive a transplant, Steinhaus said. The other half either will receive a transplant or continue with interim treatment, such as kidney dialysis.

Living Legacy is affiliated with LifeCenter Northwest. For the past 10 years, the foundation has been the official federal organ procurement organization for this part of the country. The foundation maintains an organ donor registry with help from the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

If you are a prospective donor, your driver's license has a tiny red heart on it.

That alerts emergency room doctors and nurses to check the registry if a patient with potentially fatal injuries comes into one of 190 participating hospitals.

Eligible donors are relatively few because they must be brain-dead, but can be kept alive by a ventilator that keeps oxygen flowing to the bodily organs, she said.

Each donor has the potential to help eight others: a heart, two lungs, two kidneys, a liver, a pancreas and intestines.

Organ transplants in the Northwest are done at only five hospitals: the University of Washington Medical Center, Swedish Medical Center, Virginia Mason Medical Center, Children's Hospital -- all in Seattle -- and Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane.

But organs can be harvested from patients at other hospitals, including those in Pierce County.

The Living Legacy Foundation also is responsible for public education.

Those efforts are funded through private fundraising and from voluntary contributions from drivers when they renew their vehicle registrations.

The renewal notice gives drivers an option: "I wish to donate to the Organ/Tissue Donation Awareness Account." The minimum donation is $1, but drivers can contribute more.

Brad Benfield, spokesman for the state Department of Licensing, said drivers have given $388,740 to the account since it was begun Jan. 1, 2004.

Those funds are used to publicize the organ donor program, in television ads and in the 1 million brochures that Living Legacy distributes among the 63 driver license offices throughout the state, Steinhaus said.

Anyone 16 years old or older can be an organ donor, although 16- and 17-year-olds must have their parents' permission.

The campaign in Washington apparently is working. While Washington has nearly half of its citizens on the organ donor registry, Alaska has only 36 percent of it population, she said.

The ultimate destination for transplant organs is dictated partly by time, she said.

"The heart and lungs can only be out of the body for about six hours, so the distance they can go is limited," she said.

Joseph Turner: 253-597-8436

Organ donations in 2005

553 Number of organ transplants in the Northwest (Washington, Montana, Alaska and northern Idaho)

28,112 Transplants nationwide

154 People who donated organs in Washington

7,593 People who donated organs nationwide

3.3 Average number of organs recovered from each donor

-----

Copyright (c) 2006, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: The News Tribune

More News in this Category