April is Donate Life Month

April is National Donate Life Month (NDLM), a time dedicated to encouraging Americans to register as organ, eye and tissue donors and to celebrating those who have given life by donating. As physicians, we see patients from across the kidney disease spectrum, from early stage to end stage kidney failure to transplant eligibility. Dialysis is an effective way of treating end stage renal disease, but most patients do not see it as their only long-term choice. The greatest gift we can give our patients is to encourage them to consider transplantation and to help them navigate the sometimes-turbulent waters of transplant evaluation.

In an effort to raise awareness of the need for organ donation, Donate Life America helped institute NDLM in 2003. More people are registering every year, but the gap between donors and candidates for donation continues to increase.

Kidneys are the most in demand of all organ donations. Out of the current 120,000-plus organ-transplant candidates, more than 100,000 are hoping for kidney transplants.(1) Last year, however, only 16,892 kidney transplants occurred. The remaining individuals were left to wait for a potential donor match, with the average wait time for a kidney anywhere from three to five years.

To illustrate the need for organ donors on a smaller scale, consider this: On average 79 people receive an organ transplant every day. However, on average 18 people die every day due to the shortage of donated organs. That means that each day, 19 percent of all patients waiting for an organ transplant will die. Those numbers increase when you look at patients in large cities where there is a proportionally greater demand for transplants.

We have the opportunity to address the disparity between organs needed and donors available. At its most basic, the issue is that we do not have enough registered donors, either living or deceased. In theory, this should be an easy fix.

Ninety percent of Americans say they support organ donation, but the difficulty arises when we try to translate that support into registered donors. Part of the problem is that most Americans don’t really understand the transplant process, or they believe prevailing myths regarding living donor transplantation. As care providers, we are in a unique position to help mitigate the fears and dispel the myths about living donation.

Researchers are continuing to study and illuminate the relative safety of organ donation for living donors. According to a study by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, researchers have found very little medical risk related to living organ donation, and people who donate one of their kidneys are likely to live just as long as those who have two healthy ones.(2)

However, as an alternative to donating a kidney during their lifetime, people can enroll in a state donor registry; the easiest way is to sign up at the DMV. We no longer have to sign the backs of our driver’s licenses but instead can register when we obtain or renew our licenses. More than twice as many donations come from deceased donors as living ones. Anyone over 18 can register on their own as an organ donor, whether as a living donor or as a donor after he or she passes away. I am registered – are you?

This April and over the upcoming months, I will be encouraging friends, family, colleagues and others who are interested to visit the National Kidney Registry to start the process of registering as a donor. Raising awareness of the importance of being an organ donor is the first step in increasing the number of lives we can save through organ donation. So much of our work deals with helping our patients manage their disease, but we can also help increase their life span and quality of life by encouraging others to register as organ donors. You can also join the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #DonateLife.

Keep in mind what Winston Churchill said:

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”

(1) All facts and statistics provided by the United States Renal Data System, UNOS, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) and the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) annual report.

(2) Segev, D. L. MD, PhD, Muzaale, A.D., MD, MPH, Caffo, B.S., PhD, Mehta, S.H., PhD, Singer, A.L., MD, PhD, Taranto, S.E., McBride, M.A., PhD, Montgomery, R.A., MD, DPhil (2010). Perioperative mortality and long-term survival following live kidney donation. Journal of the American Medical Association, 303(10), 959-966.