February isn’t just about Valentine’s Day. But since that holiday means something from a sweetheart, it’s also an opportunity to focus on another kind of loving gift: human organs.
Observed each year on Feb. 14, National Organ Donor Day is meant to increase awareness of organ donation. In the U.S., it’s estimated that more than 120,000 people are waiting for a lifesaving donation.
But while organ donations are stable and even growing, living organ transplantation – usually of livers and kidneys – could use a boost. It remains a small percentage of transplants in the country, despite being the better option clinically, reports the Cleveland Clinic.
Just 23% of kidney transplants and 6% of liver transplants involved a living donor in 2023, according to data from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN). Only about 6,500 procedures take place each year, according to organdonor.gov.
“Compared to deceased donor transplantation, there has been little growth nationally in living donation over the past decade,” says Dr. Neerja Agrawal, a medical director at the Cleveland Clinic Weston Hospital in Florida. “But there are many initiatives trying to move the needle on living donation so that we can save more lives.”
Most kidneys and livers used in transplantation come from deceased donors, but that doesn’t provide enough organs for all those who need them, according to Yale Medicine. Of those waiting for an organ to save their lives, many will wait for years. That’s why the need for living donations is so acute, and why education on the process is essential.
“Our philosophy is that people should be as healthy after donating a kidney as before,” says Dr. Sanjay Kulkarni, director of Yale Medicine and the Yale New Haven Hospital Center for Living Organ Donors at Yale New Haven Health in Connecticut.
The benefits of living donation for the recipient are many, including shorter waits for an organ and fewer complications and procedures, according to Yale New Haven Health. A living organ is likely to last longer than one from a deceased donor, and healthy donors will continue to live healthy lives after they donate.
Most people 18 and up can be living donors; so can those 65 and older in some cases. Some health conditions can prevent individuals from being living donors, so a transplant surgeon will take a full medical history, including a blood test.
A national effort is underway to attract more living donors. Last June, according to the Cleveland Clinic, the OPTN issued recommendations on removing barriers for living donors, including financial and logistical issues, and increasing public trust in the process.
The Living Donor Collective (LDC) is a national registry launched in 2018 with 10 participating transplant centers. The goal is to gradually expand the registry to include all living donor programs in the U.S.
“I’m hopeful that as we learn more about the reasons individuals choose not to donate,” notes Agrawal, “we can create national strategies and policies to address those concerns and issues.”
For more information on becoming a living donor, contact the Yale New Haven Transplantation Center at (866) 925-3897 or visit organdonor.gov.
