Outreach

Organ Donors Save Lives
April is National Tissue and Organ Donor Awareness Month

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Aside from filling out our driver’s license renewal forms, many of us don’t give a second thought to becoming organ donors. Organ donation is often something most of us are lucky enough not to have to think about, as our organs automatically continue to function properly. However, there are approximately 110,000 people in the U.S. currently awaiting organ transplants; most of them are between the ages of 18 and 49. On average, each day, 75 people will receive organ transplants and 20 will die while waiting for a donor. To address the need for organ donation, April has been designated National Tissue and Organ Donor Awareness Month.

Pay it Forward…

Thinking about donating our organs may bring about feelings of discomfort. Most of us simply don’t want to think about dying, especially at a young age (when the healthiest organs are harvested). However, when we understand that our individual choices to become organ donors can positively impact so many people, it becomes easier to get over the “coming to terms with our own mortality” hurdle.

Did you know that tissues and organs from just one deceased donor can be transplanted into more than fifty people, and that one donor can save the lives of eight people? While tissue transplants can help people recover from trauma, spinal injuries, bone damage, burns, vision loss and hearing impairment, organ transplants are the standard medical treatments for cases of end-stage organ failure. Some of the more commonly transplanted organs include:

Kidney - one or two kidneys are transplanted due to diabetes, chronic, uncontrolled high blood pressure, polycystic kidney disease;
Liver - usually for cases of chronic, active cirrhosis or hepatitis in adults;
Heart - when cardiomyopathy and/or severe coronary heart disease begins to lead to heart failure;
Lung - one or both lungs is replaced to when chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cystic fibrosis, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, or primary pulmonary hypertension cannot be controlled in any other way;
Pancreas - a pancreas transplant can help a person with Type I (juvenile) diabetes no longer need insulin shots;
Intestine - when intravenous feeding (total parenteral nutrition) doesn’t work for people with intestinal failure, which is sometimes due to “short gut syndrome”;
Thymus - in babies born without a thymus, the organ which generates immune cells, a transplant can help them fight off infection and increase their chances of survival.

When Every Second Counts: Matching Organ Donors and Recipients

In most cases, time is truly of the essence when matching an organ donor with recipients. Even when maintained on artificial life support, organs must be harvested within 72 hours of death. Recipients must also be determined, contacted and transported to hospitals. Since a donor's organs can remain healthy for only a short period of time after their removal, they must also be quickly transported to hospitals where recipients will be waiting in operating rooms.

Most donors have died due to severe head trauma, a brain aneurysm or a stroke. Regardless of whether a patient is an organ donor, doctors and hospital staff will always do everything they can to save a person’s life. However, when a person's brain dies, i.e. loses all function, the person is considered dead (a person in a coma who is on life support is not brain dead); a neurosurgeon or neurologist usually makes this determination.

If brain death occurs or is imminent, the hospital will contact the local Organ Procurement Organization (OPO), which will try to obtain legal consent for organ donation (i.e. find out if the person has registered or obtain consent from next of kin). If the recently deceased is a potential donor, the OPO representative will immediately go to the hospital to get the process started, and will contact the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) to start the search for matching recipients.

The OPTN operates a national database which lists all patients awaiting transplants in the U.S. The OPO and OPTN match donors and recipients by blood type, tissue type, height and weight. The OPTN produces a computer-generated list of compatible recipients, and offers each organ to the first compatible patients on the list. Other factors that play into the decisions include length of time potential recipients have waited for organs, severity of their illnesses, and distances from the donor; 75 percent of donations go to local recipients. While race and ethnicity are not considered in the matching process, blood and tissue compatibility is more likely among people of the same race or ethnicity (hence, recipients have better chances of receiving organ transplants if there are large numbers of donors of the same race or ethnicity).

During the donation decision-making process, the hospital staff keeps the donor on artificial life support and monitors each organ with the OPO representative until surgery is performed. The surgeon(s) will remove the organs, then tissues like bone, skin and the cornea, before surgically closing the person (so as not to interfere with open casket funerals).

How to Become an Organ Donor

One of the most common ways to become an organ donor is to register as one when you obtain or renew your driver’s license; most state DMVs now allow people to register at any time through the Internet. Another way is to sign up in your state’s organ donor registry. Many people also carry organ donor cards, or indicate their intent to donate to their families, who can effectively give consent if the worst happens.

Death is not always a prerequisite for organ donation. A living person can donate to friends, family or even anonymously one kidney or a portion of his or her intestines, pancreas, or lungs. Blood donation, of course, is a more commonly chosen option.

Following the lead of European countries, some U.S. states are and considering “opt-out” organ donation policies where donation upon death would become the default procedure. Citing that only 11 percent of eligible donors are registered in New York, Sen. David Carlucci (D-Orangetown) is pushing for new legislation (i.e. Lauren’s Law), which would require New Yorkers to make a decision about organ donation when filling out driver’s license applications. Perhaps such a law will help to subside fears of the unknown faced by driver’s license applicants, especially teenagers.

For more information about organ donation:

Metabolic Cardiology: a Heart Transplant Alternative?

Through the practice of metabolic cardiology, some proactive patients on the heart transplant waiting list have actually been able to heal their failing hearts to the point where they no longer need transplants. In many cases, heart failure is the end result of energy starvation in the heart. Diseased hearts require enormous amounts of energy, or ATP molecules, to heal while continually providing the rest of the body with life-sustaining blood.

“Every Year, about 2300 Americans receive a heart transplant, mostly because of heart failure or severe coronary artery disease. Tragically, many who need this procedure don’t survive the tortuous 7-month average wait for a phone call telling them a match has been found… Sadly, such was the case of a 30-year old man suffering from heart failure. I received a call from his desperate mother…In her quest to save her son’s life she called me to see if I would talk to her son’s cardiologist about nutraceutical support for the heart including coenzyme Q10, magnesium, carnitine and D-ribose… these four crucial supplements have saved many of my patients from the failing, nutrient-starved hearts I’ve treated.

Hoping I could make a difference, I left a message with the doctor’s staff. Days went by. No call back. I finally had to tell this loving mother that I never heard from her doctor. As a parent of a son the same age, my voice cracked and my heart hurt with hers as she called some time later to say that her son had passed away. By comparison, imagine my joy a few days later when I received a call from a woman whose husband had been waiting for a heart transplant who also had heart failure. She called to share ‘great news’ with me, but not that a donor had been found. Rather her husband was taken off the waiting list.

She, too, had read about these four heart-healthy supplements that I frequently refer to as the ‘awesome foursome.’ Her husband’s quality of life had been poor, she said, but after starting the supplements his health turned around.”

-From The Sinatra Solution: Metabolic Cardiology (2008 edition).

For some patients awaiting transplants, metabolic cardiology can buy them more time; for others, it can be a cure. For more anecdotes about people who have “come back from the brink” of heart failure, as well as information about metabolic cardiology, see: