Life-giving donations

12 March 2009

A decline in organ donors because of fewer fatal car accidents has led doctors to use "creative thinking" and create a new protocol for those they will remove organs from.

Last year 31 people donated organs after death, down from 38 in 2007, according to Organ Donation New Zealand's annual report.

Car crash deaths have halved in the past 20 years to about 400 a year, which has meant a smaller pool of potential donors.

In 2007, seven people who died in road crashes donated organs, and last year that dropped to just two.

But a new protocol, which allows donations after cardiac death rather than only from brain-dead patients, could lead to a rise in donor numbers.

Stephen Streat, Organ Donation's clinical director and an intensive care specialist at Auckland City Hospital, said though the number of donors was declining, the number of people receiving a transplant had stayed at about 180 a year.

Doctors were optimistic the number of people receiving donations would remain stable through live kidney donors, the ability of a live donor to donate half a liver, and a surgical technique in which a dead person's liver was split between an adult and a child, allowing two people to benefit.

"By using creative thinking and surgical skills, the number of recipients has remained pretty constant," Dr Streat said.

Hospitals began allowing donations from people who had suffered cardiac death from last year.

In the past, patients had to be brain-dead before they could become an organ donor.

Now, patients whose hearts have stopped and who have a severe brain injury and will not recover, can be organ donors in a protocol known as Donation after Cardiac Death.

So far, three people had been donors in this way, Dr Streat said, providing six kidneys, four eyes and a liver.

Source The Dominion Post - authors Emily Watt and Greer McDonald