Health experts have proposed a special “fast-track” waiting list for high-risk donors, organs from whom will be offered to seriously ill transplant patients who may be at even greater risk of dying if they do not get a transplant.
Doctors at the Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust have proposed the plan and Professor James Neuberger, associate medical director for organ donation and transplantation at NHS Blood and Transplant, has endorsed it.
Experts have warned that the quantity and quality of donors has been declining with more and more organs coming either from elderly or from people whose lifestyle has caused them damage. NHS, for years, has been trying to increase the donor base and the latest proposal is a move that according to Dr Titus Augustine, director of transplantation at Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, matches risk with risk.
“There are people on the list who are willing to take that risk, accept kidneys from people with known infection risk or cancer risk”, said Dr Augustine as quoted by The Scotsman.
According to NHS there are currently 5,500 patients on the kidney transplant waiting list and hundreds of patients die each year waiting for an organ.
According to the proposal put forward, potential risks of disease and mortality associated with transplanting kidneys from high-risk donors could be less than the mortality in some selected patients, without transplantation. The aim is to utilise and match kidneys from high-risk donors who are currently being turned down with a group or urgent patients at risk of mortality without transportation.
Professor Neuberger dubs this proposal as an exciting one and says that they will also identify patients who would be willing to take organs from higher risk donors.
“NHS Blood and Transplant would offer these organs to kidney transplant centres according to an agreed and published protocol. The transplant units then decide whether or not to accept these organs for their patients”, said Neuberger as quoted by The Sunday Telegraph.
This is to be allowed and yet a bill by Maurice Saatchi to allow terminally ill cancer patients access to pioneering treatment is not. Don’t get it. Who makes these decisions?