Becoming A Donor Requires Some Forethought

By Knight Ridder Newspapers and The Associated Press

Miami - The most important thing you can do to become an organ donor is to discuss it with your family beforehand.

"It's a lot easier when the decision is made ahead of time," said Mary-Ellen Anton, an organ-procurement coordinator at the University of Miami.

If the issue hasn't been discussed, "when the family is approached, and they are in the midst of acute grief, and they're not thinking rationally anyway, they're really bewildered," said Les Olson, UM's director of organ procurement. "When they're bewildered like that, it usually means it's a no. If they've discussed it in the past, it's usually a yes."

In addition, you can indicate on your driver's license that you want to donate your organs. Or you can fill out an organ-donation card and carry it in your wallet.

Olson stresses that only a small percentage of organs are usable for transplantation, even if the donor's family has agreed. Trauma, disease and age all take their toll. "That's why it's so valuable," he said.

The number of patients awaiting organ transplants rose more than five times as fast as the number of transplant operations in the 1990s, the nation's transplant network reported in February.

The report by the United Network for Organ Sharing found slow growth in the number of organs from deceased donors, while the number of living organ donors more than doubled between 1990 and 1999.

In 1999, there were a total of 21,715 transplants performed in the United States, up 44 percent from 1990. But there were 72,110 people on the national transplant waiting list at the end of 1999, more than three times as many as in 1990. Today, the total is about 76,000.

The number of deaths on the waiting list also more than tripled - from 1,958 in 1990 to 6,125 in 1999.

Transplant surgeon George Burke tells of a case that strongly influenced his view of organ donations. A young woman who was struggling to have a child finally became pregnant. Her son was born with a disorder that led to a failing liver. After deteriorating for a few months while on the transplant list, the baby got a new liver. But the complications proved insurmountable.

"As I went to tell her the news that he wasn't going to make it, I ran into the director of our procurement program," Burke remembered. "He said, `You ought to ask her if this young baby could donate his corneas.'

But when he went in to speak to the mother, she began crying, looked up at him and asked, "Can I donate his eyes?"

"That opened my own eyes to how people on the recipient end understand the importance of it better than any of the rest of us can," Burke said. "I actually feel very strongly that the only way you can salvage anything out of any of these situations is to be a donor.

"Otherwise, it is a total waste."

Copyright © 2001 The Seattle Times Company.

This article posted October 3, 2001.