Shortage means donor organs older, diseased

Transplant patients are getting organs from old or diseased donors as a chronic shortage bites, doctors say.

Surgeons have been forced to take organs they would have turned down a decade ago. With fewer healthy young people dying on the roads and about 400 people waiting for organs, doctors are taking what they can get. They say the situation is worrying, but they are careful to manage the risks.

Last year, the age of donors ranged from 14 months to 78 years. Four donors were 65 or older and the average age was 43.

Of the 40 donors, one had type 2 diabetes, nine had a history of high blood pressure, 13 were smokers, three former smokers and three tested positive for exposure to hepatitis B. Organs were provided for 114 people.

"It is a huge issue," kidney and liver transplant programme director Stephen Munn said.

"The average age of donors has risen by more than a decade in the past 10 years. It used to be young accident victims, now it's old people with strokes, old fat people with strokes and hepatitis."

In 1998, road accident victims made up 24 per cent of all donors. In 2004 that had dropped to 17.5 per cent.

As well as older people, surgeons are accepting donors with diseases such as hepatitis and diabetes, which can hinder an organ's function.

"Once upon a time we would never have taken the organs of a person with hepatitis C. Now if the liver is only mildly damaged we still use that in a patient with hepatitis C - it's still better than what they have got."

Doctors try to immunise waiting list patients against hepatitis B, so they can receive organs from donors who have had the disease.

Kidney transplant physician Ian Dittmer now accepts donors he would not have taken four or five years ago. He said surgeons were also transplanting kidneys from much younger, and much older, braindead donors.

Heart transplants appear to be less affected. Auckland City Hospital cardiologist Peter Ruygrok said the average age of heart donors had remained fairly static from 1993 to 2004, at 30 to 35.

- NZPA