Candidates for kidney transplants in UNOS Region 1 may find a shorter wait
for their operation. A new incentive program was started for people with
family members in need of a kidney. UNOS approved the program in February
after nine months of review.
The program,
known as Hope Through Sharing, allows a person waiting for a kidney transplant
to take a higher priority on the list when a relative makes a living donation
to another waiting recipient.
If a living
donor is not blood compatible with a relative awaiting transplant, but
is willing to donate, then the donor could give to a matched person on
the waiting list. The relative, in turn, would move to that person's position.
While the program
gives an advantage to people on the waiting list that know willing donors,
everyone benefits in the end. The waiting list for transplants is reduced
which means everyone gets closer to the option of a transplant and someone
on the waiting list is given an organ by a living donor, (living donor
organs outlast cadaveric organs on average).
Of the 77,700
people in the U.S. waiting for an organ transplant, nearly 50,000 need
a kidney. The average wait nationally is two to four years; the wait is
three to four years in some smaller states like Massachusetts.
An initiative
created by the Washington Regional Voluntary Living Donor Registry, a partnership
between Washington Regional Transplant Consortium and seven Washington-area
kidney transplant programs, made more kidneys available to patients needing
transplants.
The growing
transplant waiting list prompted WRTC and the transplant centers at Children’s
National Medical Center, Georgetown University Medical Center, Howard University
Hospital, Inova Fairfax Hospital, National Institutes of Health (NIH),
Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Washington Hospital Center to create
the registry as an innovative way to increase the supply of organs.
The measure
offers solutions to those waiting on a kidney transplant with a willing
related or unrelated living donor but not one whose blood type matches
theirs. The Washington Regional Voluntary Living Donor Registry offers
several options:
Paired exchange.
A person may want to donate a kidney to a relative or friend, but cannot
because their blood types or tissue types do not match. If another pair
in the same predicament is found, an exchange may be possible.
Living donor/cadaver
exchange. If a non-matching relative or friend donates a kidney to the
general waiting list pool, the relative or friend of the living donor would
have priority on the waiting list for a cadaver kidney.
Non-designated
donation. This addresses the person who wants to donate a kidney to the
general pool with no specific recipient in mind.
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Information Provided By
UNOS
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