ONELEGACY increases lung donations by 39%, leads nation with 1,239 organs recovered for transplant in 2012

OneLegacy | Bryan Stewart
Greater Los Angeles Non-Profit Helped to Save and Heal
More Than 67,000 Lives Through Organ, Eye and Tissue Donation

LOS ANGELES, Calif., Jan 25, 2013 â€" OneLegacy, the non-profit, federally designated organ and tissue recovery organization serving the seven-county greater Los Angeles area, announced the recovery of more than 2,000 combined organ, tissue and cornea donors in 2012, helping to save and heal more than 67,000 lives in Southern California, the state and nationwide.

Last year, OneLegacy recovered organs from 391 deceased donors. Through the generosity of donations authorized by individual registrations or the donors’ families, OneLegacy facilitated 1,239 organ transplants â€" more than any other organ recovery organization in the nation.

In 2012, two significant milestones where achieved within OneLegacy’s organ operations: an increase in the number of organs recovered per patient, and the increase in the African American authorization rate. Both achievements are a direct result of OneLegacy’s efforts to maximize every opportunity to save lives, according to Tom Mone, chief executive officer and executive vice president of OneLegacy.

“The number of organs transplanted per donor was an area of significant improvement,” said Mone. “Our Donor Management Intensivist Consult program that has helped improve organ function at the time of recovery, especially with lungs. As a result, we saved 60 more lives in comparison to the prior year’s efforts.”

Driving OneLegacy’s organ recovery activity was an authorization rate of 70 percent, the second-highest in the organization’s history. In 2012, seven out of ten organ donation opportunities were authorized either by the individual’s donor designation (primarily through the California DMV) or family authorization.

“The authorization rate increase of 21 percentage points since 2000 represents a remarkable shift in attitudes toward organ and tissue donation in Southern California,” said Mone. “This generosity is especially reflected by the increase or stabilization of authorization rates among several ethnic groups.”

The most marked increase was among African Americans, a community with high rates of organ failure but where donation is frequently viewed with mistrust. The authorization rate jumped from 58 percent in 2011 to 70 percent last year. This all-time high reflects the specific focus given to the needs of African American families by OneLegacy, collaborating donor hospitals, and the quality of service delivered to families at hospitals.

As for the authorization rate among other major ethnic groups, the rate among Asians increased by one point to a new record high of 58 percent; the Hispanic rate of 72 percent was three points below 2011’s all-time high; and the rate for potential Caucasian donors was 78 percent, a decrease of six percentage points.

Notably, 30 percent of recovered organ donors and more than 42 percent of recovered tissue and eye donors were authorized by the Donate Life California Registry, which counts nearly 9.7 million registered donors statewide.

Tissue donation increased from 2011, with a total of 1,644 tissue and cornea donors in 2012. Patients nationwide can be thankful for tissue donors who provide skin used for abdominal repairs and burn dressings, bone to repair fractures and prevent amputation, heart valves to repair life-threatening defects, tendons to repair major knee injuries, veins for cardiac bypass surgery, and corneas to end blindness.

Last year, OneLegacy also launched the OneLegacy Foundation to support and expand its life-saving mission, clinical practices, and community outreach. Through its charitable work, the OneLegacy Foundation will contribute to clinical training and research to improve outcomes, honor those who have saved lives as donors, and inspire diverse communities to donate life.

With more than 200 hospitals, 11 transplant centers and a diverse population of 19 million, OneLegacy is the largest organ and tissue recovery organization in the world. For more information, call OneLegacy at (800) 786-4077 or visit www.onelegacy.org.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Heart transplant recipient celebrates graduation with donor’s mom

Image
A.J. Reyes, right, talks with Mary Knauer prior to a graduation ceremony for Samuel Merritt University nursing program students in Oakland, Calif. on Friday, May 26, 2017. Knauer's son was killed in a motorcycle crash in 2010 and Reyes received his heart in an organ transplant. (Kristopher Skinner/Bay Area News Group) At 25, AJ Reyes was suffering from congestive heart failure and running out of time. Unless the Vallejo resident got another organ to replace his damaged one, his doctors told him he would be dead within five years. Reyes went on the California Transplant Donor Network waiting list and in November of 2010, he got the call that he had been praying for. A strong, healthy heart had become available. But his joy was clouded by the knowledge that the news meant another family’s nightmare. Justin Olivera, a 40-year-old man from Willows, a small rural town in Northern California, had just been killed in a motorcycle accident. Olivera was an organ donor, and his heart...
Read more

The Kidney Crisis

Image
Hour Detroit Magazine | By Monica Mercer // Photographs by Josh Scott Myths about organ donation and transplantation are still contaminating the real issues behind a silent health problem Dr. Alan Koffron can conjure scene after scene from the medical TV genre where human kidneys have been integral to the plot: residents dropping them on the floor, crooked doctors profiting from organ trafficking, the wrong kidney placed in the wrong body. Kidney transplantation â€" the most commonly performed of all transplant procedures in the world â€" ranks high on the medical dramatics scale, Koffran says, but he’s not sure why. An organ transplantation surgeon with Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Koffron has performed thousands of kidney transplants. He and the other medical professionals involved in the process across the country know how heavily regulated it is in the United States, with checks and balances so strong that rarely does a kidney transplant involve any- thing remotely a...
Read more

Hawthorne woman's liver donation saves cousin, the 'big sister' she never had

Image
North Jersey | Lindy Washburn CARMINE GALASSO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Jennifer Carrino, left, and cousin Nina Walsh showing off their surgery scars. Nina donated a portion of her liver to her older cousin, likely saving her life. Over the last year, Jennifer Carrino had come back from the brink of death, survived internal bleeding and spent weeks in intensive care. Then came the hard part: asking her cousin for a part of her liver. In April, doctors told Jennifer that without a transplant she probably had a year to live. Jennifer, 37, was already on transplant waiting lists in two states, but it was going to take too long, they said. She needed to think about a living donor. Jennifer turned to her younger cousin, Nina Walsh, a slip of a woman with an outsized sense of generosity. She asked her to consider giving up part of her healthy liver. The procedure, pioneered 20 years ago, pushes the ethical boundaries of medicine because it goes against a basic tenet of medicine to “first do no ha...
Read more