Waiting for a 2nd Chance

Whether it's in traffic, at a restaurant or in line for UNC basketball tickets, no one likes to wait.

But for thousands of Americans who need organ transplants, waiting is more than an annoyance -- it's the difference between life and death.

"There is a gap between the number of people on the wait list and those who receive an organ, and it's only getting larger," said Brandi Mueller, a nurse in the lung transplant department at UNC Hospitals.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' organ donation Web site, about 63 people across the nation receive an organ transplant each day. Another 16 people on the waiting list die each day because not enough organs are available.

Kidneys are the organ most in demand, with 53,000 people on the waiting list as of Oct. 11. Patients are also waiting for liver, pancreas, intestine, heart and lung transplants, and cornea and skin transplants are common as well.

Patients who need organs are registered by their local transplant centers with the United Network for Organ Sharing, which maintains a national waiting list and matches donors to recipients.

UNOS assigns each patient a priority status based on medical criteria, which will eventually dictate when the patient receives an organ.

When an organ becomes available, a local transplant coordinator uses the UNOS computer to find a successful match. The coordinator must then contact a transplant surgeon to arrange organ transport and, finally, surgery.

The patient is expected to cover operations cost, and although it varies by transplant, the process is expensive.

"The patient needs to have adequate insurance coverage," said Yulanda Horton, a financial coordinator for UNC Hospitals. If a patients do not have insurance and do not qualify for Medicaid, Horton said, they must rely on fund-raisers to cover the cost of the transplant.

Horton added that once people are on the waiting list, their financial situation does not influence their priority.

Those on the list are waiting for a limited number of organs. In 2001, according to UNOS, there were 80,236 people waiting for organs and only 12,601 donors.

Officials said one of the many factors contributing to this discrepancy is the lack of public awareness. "There are a lot of different myths (about organ donation)," said Jane Corrado, communications director for Carolina Donor Services, a local transplant organization.

Corrado said people who are unwilling to donate organs have reasons ranging from the idea that their organs are not "good enough" to a notion that doctors will not try as hard to save the lives of those who have consented to donate.

Additionally, families always have the final decision in whether to donate the organs of their loved ones.

Another myth concerns the idea that a donor indication on one's driver's license is enough to guarantee the donation of organs.

According to the CDS Web site, 92 percent of N.C. residents have a heart icon on their driver's licenses, which designates that they are an organ donor.

But only 32 percent actually have signed a donor card, which is the only form of legal consent to organ donation.

Patients who receive organs are comforted by the high success rate of organ transplants. Mueller said that there is an 85 percent one-year survival rate and that most patients are released from the hospital after eight to 14 days.

Many proponents of organ donation think the happy endings on both sides are worth all the effort.

"I've never heard of a family that regretted its decision to donate organs," Corrado said. "It helps them to know that something good can come out of tragedy."

The Features Editor can be reached at features@unc.edu.