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How Technology is Transforming Organ Procurement

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“Every year, more than 100,000 people in the United States wait for an organ donation. More than a dozen people will die each day still waiting. Such is the brutal math and the necessary optimism required to work in the organ procurement world.

For the past several decades, a private network of now 57 organ procurement organizations (OPOs) have sprouted up, all broadly affiliated with UNOS, the United Network for Organ Sharing, a nonprofit which matches donated organs with potential recipients under contract with the federal government.”

Learn more here.

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Equity means providing a transplant for every single patient that needs one

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“Recently, I joined UNOS President-Elect Jerry McCauley, M.D. at a meeting organized by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) focused on equity. We were honored to share UNOS’ work in this space and lend our voices to this vital national discussion – a discussion we look forward to continuing.

UNOS is acutely attuned to issues of equity. As the mission-driven non-profit serving as the nation’s transplant system, we work with our community partners to ensure equitable policies and outcomes in multiple ways, including:”

Read the full article, here.

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Making allocation more fair and flexible

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“The organ donation and transplantation system in the U.S. has never worked better than it does today. Deceased donor transplants have increased for 10 consecutive years, and 26% more organ transplants are performed today than five years ago. But every day, we work to continuously improve and make the system even more effective and efficient to serve all of the patients waiting for a lifesaving transplant.

As part of these efforts, the organ donation and transplant community is working together to introduce a more fair and flexible approach to allocating donated organs to get the right organ to the right patient at the right time. Our policies have always been data-driven, but this new approach applies advanced analytic techniques to create an algorithm that makes every factor in the match run comparable.

Called continuous distribution, this new framework moves organ allocation from placing and considering patients by classifications to considering multiple factors all at once using an overall score. Doing so will dissolve hard boundaries that exist in the current, category-based system and ensure that no single factor determines a patient’s priority on the waiting list.

Read more, here.

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Organ donations held almost steady during the pandemic, as the U.S. transplant system scrambled to keep going

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“This is not a pandemic “silver lining” story.

This is a could-have-been-far-worse story about how the pandemic did not fuel a catastrophe in transplantation or worsen the persistent gap between people who need organs and the donations that supply them. But just as the pandemic is not over yet, neither is the potential danger of related ramifications for people whose organs may fail and need replacement.

Covid-19’s first surge last year flooded hospitals in the United States and nearly drowned those in the Northeast. They couldn’t find enough personal protective equipment for beleaguered workers, they didn’t yet have reliable testing for patients or staff, and they couldn’t know when the nightmare might end. Within that maelstrom, many transplants had to be put on hold: How do you perform life-saving operations when the supply of already scarce donor organs nose-dives?”

Read more, here.

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Handyman donates kidney after being helped out of homelessness

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A handyman was honored to donate his kidney and pay it forward after another member of the community helped him out in his time of need.

Dan Reynolds was hired to do some work six years ago when he was spotted standing in the snow at a bus stop in Maryland.

Doug Shumway decided to give him a ride on that cold winter day and invited Reynolds to do some contracting work and had him fix some plumbing issues.

It was then that Shumway learned that Reynolds had been living out of a van for the last two years.

When he revealed he was homeless, Shumway invited Reynolds to move in with him. It wasn’t long before Reynolds became a fixture in the community doing work for neighbors.

Read full story, here.

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Representative Brian Sims Donated a Kidney to Gay Neighbor

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Pennsylvania State Representative Brian Sims is a lifesaver. When he learned he was a perfect donor match for a gay man was dying of renal failure last year, he agreed to donate one of his kidneys. This week, over a year later, Sims tweeted he ran into the now-healthy recipient and his husband while the two men were having lunch. He also revealed that when his parents came to town, the group all shared a meal together.

“My recipient Alan and his husband John were sitting having lunch,” Sims tweeted of the chance encounter that occurred while he was walking to his office last month. “A perfectly normal, healthy, happy couple sitting in the sun enjoying each other’s company. It was perfection!”

Read full story, here.

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WV man becomes oldest organ donor In U.S. history

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“The Center for Organ Recovery & Education announced Monday that it recovered the liver from the oldest recorded organ donor in U.S. history, 95-year-old Cecil F. Lockhart of Welch, West Virginia.

The record was confirmed by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), and the recipient of Lockhart’s gift, a woman in her 60s, is doing well.

Lockhart’s family said he was moved to become an organ donor following the death of his son, Stanley, in 2010, after which Stanley healed the lives of 75 people through tissue donation and restored sight to two others through cornea donation.

Read the full story, here.

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Spatial Designer Anthony Bright Launches VR Experience to Find Kidney Donors

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“Atlanta-based digital and virtual designer, Anthony Bright, just launched a virtual reality experience called “A Bright Future.” With this immersive project, Bright aims to find suitable transplant candidates after he was diagnosed with kidney disease back in November 2019. The multimedia effort also acts as a precedent for future recipients who are looking for potential donors.”

Read the full article, here.

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