Medicine

Drug-overdose deaths expand supply of organs for transplant

April 18, 2018 05:41·
Heart Transplants From Overdose Deaths Are Soaring With Promising Results

Heart Transplants From Overdose Deaths Are Soaring With Promising Results

Transplant procedures involving deceased overdose victims have increased almost 24-fold since 2000, with researchers reporting on Monday that the patients who receive these organs typically fare as well as patients who receive organs from other donors. Further, "The current epidemic of deaths from overdose is tragic", she said. For heart recipients who received new organs from donors who died of a drug overdose, trauma, or medical conditions, the unadjusted 5-year survival rates posttransplant were 79.2%, 77.5%, and 74.4%, respectively.

"In the United States, transplantation with ODD organs has increased dramatically, with noninferior outcomes in transplant recipients." the researchers wrote in their study.

A trauma-death donor could be someone who died by drowning, gunshot or asphyxiation, among other causes.

Patients who lose all brain function as a result of stroke, heart attack or brain hemorrhage also become organ donors.

As organ donors, victims of fatal drug overdose are a mixed lot.

Some good may be coming out of the tragic and troubling increase of opioid deaths in the United States.

Dr. David Klassen, chief medical officer for the United Network for Organ Sharing, said in an email that he thought the new study was "interesting" and added insights into the effects of opioid epidemic-related deaths on organ donation, as well as the outcomes for transplant recipients. The study, which was published by Johns Hopkins University researchers in the Annals of Internal Medicine, suggests that organ donations of this nature should be optimized, as it could help lessen the wait time for 115,000 transplant patients now on the national waiting list.

To do so, researchers combed the records of 138,565 dead organ donors and 337,934 solid-organ transplant recipients between 2000 and 2016. From 2000 to 2017, the number of overdose-death donors increased by 17 percent every year.

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Organ donations are up significantly and helping to save lives.

Patients who need organ donations wait an average of five to seven years to get a transplant. Those treatments have paved the way for using more organs that wouldn't have been considered.

Some of these newly available organs may be going to waste.

Gorodeski said he encourages all heart transplant centers around the country to "have open conversations with people on the waiting list about the fact that there's a higher chance these days that they may get offers from donors who died from overdoses". Donors who died from overdoses increased from 1.1% of the overall donor pool to 13.4% over the study period, and they were more likely to be white, aged 21 to 40 years, infected with hepatitis C, and at increased infectious risk.

The information is particularly relevant in a world where one in every ten deceased organ donors has died from an opioid overdose. Approximately 18 percent had hepatitis and 53 percent were otherwise labeled as "risky" donors.

New tests allow surgeons to determine more quickly whether a prospective donor is infected.

Deaths from overdoses are on the rise, yet most occur outside hospitals, making organ donation more hard. And they get discarded at higher rates than they should.

"This is not an ideal or sustainable solution to the organ shortage", lead researcher Dr. Christine Durand wrote in the medical journal. Durand believes that "we have an obligation to optimize the use of all organs donated".

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