Rule Change May Not Save Dying Child, But You Could
Science 2.0 | Robert Cooper
Deciding who gets a lung transplant - and thereby who doesn’t - is not easy. Lungs can only be transplanted from people who are organ donors, who are brain dead, and who died in such a way that their organs remain intact. Problem is, there are not enough people marking the “organ donor†box on their driver’s license to give everyone on the transplant list a chance to live.
The current lung allocation system was revamped in 2005 to try and make it more fair. Previously, your place in line was determined by how long you had been waiting. That system incentivized people to get on the list before they really needed a lung just to accumulate waiting time, and it essentially sentenced to death anyone whose lungs went downhill too quickly. The new system tries to optimize lung allocation by considering both how bad your lungs are and how much good a transplant is likely to do for you. This is meant to be more fair, but as long as more people need new lungs than are willing to donate, somebody is going to die waiting on the list.
The system works differently for children under 12, like the two dying kids whom a judge recently ordered placed on the regular transplant list. Kids under 12 have priority for any lungs donated by other kids under 12, which are few and far between, but they are put at the bottom of the list for any lungs from older donors. The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) says young children’s small size can make transplantation of adult lungs tricky and may reduce the probability of success. This is hard to know, however, because only one child under 12 has received an adult lung since 2007.
Continue reading
______________________________________________________
"You have the power to SAVE lives."
To register as a donor in California:
www.donateLIFEcalifornia.org | www.doneVIDAcalifornia.org
Outside California:
www.organdonor.gov | www.donatelife.
Deciding who gets a lung transplant - and thereby who doesn’t - is not easy. Lungs can only be transplanted from people who are organ donors, who are brain dead, and who died in such a way that their organs remain intact. Problem is, there are not enough people marking the “organ donor†box on their driver’s license to give everyone on the transplant list a chance to live.
The current lung allocation system was revamped in 2005 to try and make it more fair. Previously, your place in line was determined by how long you had been waiting. That system incentivized people to get on the list before they really needed a lung just to accumulate waiting time, and it essentially sentenced to death anyone whose lungs went downhill too quickly. The new system tries to optimize lung allocation by considering both how bad your lungs are and how much good a transplant is likely to do for you. This is meant to be more fair, but as long as more people need new lungs than are willing to donate, somebody is going to die waiting on the list.
The system works differently for children under 12, like the two dying kids whom a judge recently ordered placed on the regular transplant list. Kids under 12 have priority for any lungs donated by other kids under 12, which are few and far between, but they are put at the bottom of the list for any lungs from older donors. The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) says young children’s small size can make transplantation of adult lungs tricky and may reduce the probability of success. This is hard to know, however, because only one child under 12 has received an adult lung since 2007.
Continue reading
______________________________________________________
"You have the power to SAVE lives."
To register as a donor in California:
www.donateLIFEcalifornia.org | www.doneVIDAcalifornia.org
Outside California:
www.organdonor.gov | www.donatelife.
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