Fewer people are waiting for a donor organ

After the transplant scandal, fewer people are waiting for organs

06/10/2014

As the „Southgerman newspaper“ The number of patients waiting for a donor organ has decreased significantly. This may possibly have something to do with the fact that doctors rarely recommend their patients for a transplant after the organ donation scandal.

Significantly fewer patients are waiting for a donor organ
The „Southgerman newspaper“ (SZ) reports in its Tuesday issue that the number of patients waiting for a donor organ has declined significantly. Accordingly, the German Foundation for Organ Transplantation on „Day of organ donation“ to the fate of the approximately 11,000 people who are on the waiting list for a donor organ. Three of them die each day as they do not receive an organ in time. According to the report, however, 12,000 have been on the waiting list for decades in this country. So how does it explain that, according to the most recent report by the Eurotransplant Foundation, it was only 10,784 at the latest??

Organ donation scandals dropped willingness to donate
That they suddenly recovered, „can probably be excluded as well as a better supply of organs“, said Eugen Brysch, board member of the German Foundation for Patient Protection to the SZ. Donor readiness fell to a historic low last year as a result of organ donation scandals that revealed transplant manipulations at several university hospitals. Only 876 organ donors were recorded in 2013. In the first four months of the current year, they continued to fall by 4.7 per cent to 287. „It is quite possible that fewer patients want to be on the waiting list since the scandal“, said Richard Viebahn, Chairman of the Ethics Committee of the German Transplantation Society. Perhaps the media reports could have led to the pros and cons of transplants.

Doctors now weigh more obviously
It is, however, speculated that the reasons are mainly to be sought by the doctors. Apparently, they weigh more heavily before listing a patient. Thus, they sometimes decide to offer healthier patients less stressful treatment or to list less-severely ill patients less often because of the often low chance of survival. „It is now discussed in detail about each individual patient“, Eurotransplant president Bruno Meiser. Since the scandals no longer individual doctors decide on the inclusion on the waiting list, but teams of at least three medics. Meiser explained that he was also aware that there are even fewer organs to distribute than before.

Waiting list was particularly often manipulated in the liver
Especially with two organs, the shortened list is conspicuous. While as many people as five years ago are waiting for heart and kidneys, the lungs and liver are about 30 percent less than in 2009. Lately, pulmonary measurements have been decided by the lungs and less by physicians as to whether a patient is even listed may be. And the liver was the organ in which the waiting list was manipulated a lot and the too-sick patient was transplanted. Many of them died in the first year after the transplant - and with them the donated organ.

Move people to fill out an organ donor card
Politicians have also accepted the decline in donations. Federal Health Minister Hermann Gröhe promotes more organ donations with the campaign „I decide“. As many people as possible should be moved to fill in an organ donor card. According to a survey commissioned by the Federal Center for Health Education (BZgA), although 68 percent of Germans agreed to donate their organs after death. But only 28 percent of Germans have an organ donor card. (Ad)