The United Network for Organ Sharing will hold a public hearing that will encourage the idea of getting liver donations in where viable donors are high in number. Other transplant authorities, however, oppose.
At present, the shortage of liver donation is one of the biggest problems encountered worldwide. The United Network for Organ Sharing will hold a public hearing that will encourage the idea of getting liver donations in where viable donors are high in number.
This shortage is due to the fact that the number of liver buyers always exceeds that of liver donors. About 6,000 liver transplant operations happen each year, but there are 15,600 of people who are waiting for livers.
Thus, people who need liver transplants in areas where donations are sparse, like in California, the patient would need to wait a long time before the surgery can take place. In fact, Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple, who once had a transplant had to fly to Tennessee for his surgery.
However, this is not the case for most people. An average of 1,500 people die each year while waiting for a liver transplant across all regions.
Nowadays, the number of an obesity epidemic, fatty liver disease has become a growing problem that means the number of people who will be needing liver transplant will increase too.
"We lose someone every week who never got a shot at a life-saving liver transplant because of where they live, that same person would have had a shot if they lived in Kansas or Georgia or Louisiana-places that are source of liver donors," says Dr. David Mulligan, chief of Transplantation and Immunology at Yale and chairman of the United Network for Organ Sharing committee.
However, some doctors are against this because instead of pushing a campaign to identify new liver donors, they are wasting money on transporting livers from regions where it is abundant to the places where there is a shortage of livers.
For instance, according to the director of Transplantation at the University of Kansas, Dr. Tim Schmitt's, Mulligan's committee is looking at the problem the wrong way. Instead of shifting regions, Schmitt believes, the committee should focus on signing up more organ donors.
Schmitt's argument comes from the fact that transporting organs to longer distances could cost health care centers $30 million yearly. Then again, Mulligan argues that cost would be offset when doctors have to take care of fewer people with end-stage liver failure.
Both sides of the debate agree though, that no matter how the system will change, it is only a temporary fix if people don't donate liver.