23rd Aug 11
A&E organ donation can save more lives
by Paul Russell
Saving lives: hospital workers told to look out for potential organ donors
Saving lives: hospital workers told to look out for potential organ donors
The lives of many more people could be saved each year as hospital employees are told to do more in order to secure organ donations within casualty departments.
New guidelines are expected to highlight to accident and emergency workers the potential of taking organs from patients that are not likely to live long, like those who arrive with non-survivable brain injuries after road accidents.
Doctors will be told that they must look out for people on the donation register so that they can be put on ventilators to be kept alive until relatives arrive and then be allowed to die naturally as specialist doctors retrieve their organs.
Until recently, it was relatively uncommon to take organs from patients who had died in A&E even if they had been on the donor registry list, meaning that many people on waiting lists for replacement hearts or kidneys missed out. However, over the last few years, the amount of donors has doubled to 75 as a result of work by health experts.
This figure is set to grow even further with the upcoming publication of the new guidelines by the British Transplantation Society and the College of Emergency Medicine. Chris Rudge, the NHS’s “transplant tsar”, said that the figures remain small but there have been significant increases during the past year or two. He added that he is optimistic the numbers will rise quite markedly and quickly during the two or three years ahead.
Overall, 29 per cent of the England’s population is listed on the NHS Organ Donor Register, which means they allow their body parts to be used following their death in order to save the lives of others, while nearly half a million people die each year in the country.
But few of those who lose their lives have their organs transplanted into other bodies due to strict regulations regarding who is eligible and lengthy waiting lists result in the death of three patients per day before they are able to be saved.
Mr Rudge went on to say that he doesn’t think people are fully aware of how careful you must be to ensure that organs are safe and will work and just how limited the circumstances are. He explained that although hundreds die every day, the vast majority of deaths are caused by diseases which make their organs unsuitable, or are very sudden at home or in a traffic accident.
The bodies of those whose death has resulted from cancer cannot be used as the disease may have spread to the organs which would be transplanted, while people who suffered from infections like HIV and elderly people whose health had declined gradually are also ruled out.
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