In A Hopeful Trend, More Lives Were Saved Through Organ Transplants from Deceased Donors in 2004 in the New York Metro Area than in Any Previous Year

Tissue Donor Numbers Were Also the Highest Ever Last Year, But the Need for More Donors Remains

NEW YORK, NY, March 1, 2005 - In the words of Terramar King, her baby daughter's liver disease was so serious, that she was soon “going to die.” After she was born in May 2003, Ta-Nasia King remained jaundiced for two weeks. Terramar soon learned the frightening news: Ta-Nasia had no bile duct and her only hope was a liver transplant. Finally, on May 12, 2004, after months of anxious waiting and only three days before her first birthday, Ta-Nasia received a new liver at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan . The donor was a deceased person who had generously given the gift of life.

Now, Ta-Nasia, who lives with her mom, dad Bobby Dixon and brothers Jah-Hod and Jaquan King in Hartford, CT. , is a perfectly normal baby. “I'm so happy,” said Terramar. “They saved my daughter's life.”

Ta-Nasia represents just one of 618 people whose lives were saved through organ transplants from deceased donors in 2004 in the Greater New York metropolitan area – a record number of transplants from deceased donors in one year in the region. The previous benchmark year was 1998, with 582 transplants from deceased donors. In 2003, 524 people were transplanted from deceased donors in the New York metro area.

In what turned out to be a significant year for organ donation in the New York metro area, 262 deceased donors gave the gift of life out of a total of 608 potential donors. That translated into a 47 percent organ donation consent rate, six points higher than the two previous years. The average organ donation consent rate nationwide for deceased donors is 55 percent. In the New York metro area, the previous highest number of deceased organ donors was 247 in 1998. The high tally of deceased organ donors in 2004 represents a 21 percent increase over the number of organ donors in 2003.

In addition to those deceased individuals who donated solid organs in 2004, the Donor Network recovered tissues from 450 deceased donors, 21 more than in 2002 which had previously held that record. Of particular significance were the 395 people who became musculoskeletal donors, the most donors in this category in the history of the Donor Network. That number reflects an eight percent increase over the previous year which had held the record.

“The dramatic growth in the number of organ and tissue donors in 2004, and the resulting saving of so many more lives, is deeply gratifying,” said Elaine R. Berg, president and CEO of the New York Organ Donor Network. “We are extremely encouraged by this upward trend. Those people whose lives were in the balance, waiting for transplants, and their families, will forever be indebted to the generosity of the donors. And so are we.”

Referring to the rising number of families that agreed to organ donation upon the death of their loved ones in 2004, Ms. Berg said, “When we consider our 262 organ donors over the past year, we have come a long way since having recovered 199 organ donors as recently as 2001.”

The small pool of potential deceased organ donors nationwide and locally is explained by the fact that the vast majority of organs are recovered from hospital patients who have been declared dead by neurological criteria. Brain deaths account for approximately one to two percent of all deaths of patients in hospitals, making it a relatively rare event.

Even though 2004 was a benchmark year for the Donor Network, Ms. Berg said much still had to be done to overcome the organ and tissue shortage. “With almost 7,000 people waiting for organ transplants in our area, and many more awaiting tissue transplants, much work still needs to be done to overcome the ever-widening gap between those who are waiting for a transplant and those who give them the gift of life,” she said.

Of the more than 600 organs transplanted from deceased donors last year, a total of 315 were kidneys, 211 were livers, 55 were hearts, 30 were lungs, 23 were pancreas, and 2 were intestines. Comparable national numbers for donation are not yet available, but tentative numbers indicate that there were just over 7,000 deceased organ donors nationally, also a record 10% over last year.

Ms. Berg attributed the donation gains to various initiatives implemented by the Donor Network over the past few years. These included heightened public education programs such as targeted programs to various racial, ethnic and religious groups; the creation of a new Web site; paid advertising on Long Island ; and a greater presence in communities at the grassroots level. Other efforts were aimed at increasing enrollment in the New York State Organ and Tissue Donor Registry in the workplace, and by forming alliances with religious leaders and houses of worship.

Another major contributing factor in terms of the higher number of donors was the excellent response from health care personnel in the New York region's hospitals, Ms. Berg said. She pointed to the successful introduction in 2001 of Donor Network family services coordinators and in-hospital coordinators at certain hospitals in the region as a contributing factor in the rising number of donors. The program is now operating in 19 metro hospitals.

Ms. Berg also praised the efforts of the U.S. department of Health and Human, Services, whose Organ Donation Breakthrough Collaborative is being implemented at a number of hospitals in the New York metro area.

“The Collaborative is committed to saving or enhancing thousands of lives a year by expanding best known practices to the nation's largest hospitals to achieve organ donation rates of 75 percent or higher in these hospitals,” Ms. Berg said. “The initiative was first launched locally at New York-Presbyterian's Columbia and New York Weill Cornell campuses. With promising results from these collaborations, we are extremely pleased that the program is now being established at Bellevue Hospital Center , Montefiore Medical Center , and at North Shore University Hospitals and Long Island Jewish Medical Center.”

New York Organ Donor Network:

Founded in 1978, the New York Organ Donor Network is the second largest of the nation's 58 nonprofit, federally designated organ procurement organizations (OPOs). It is responsible for the recovery of organs and tissues for transplantation, and public and professional education efforts for a culturally and ethnically diverse population of 13 million in the Greater New York metropolitan area. The Donor Network serves Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island, Long Island, Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, and Westchester, and also Pike County, PA. It works closely with nine transplant centers and more than 100 hospitals in the New York metropolitan area

For more information, contact Martin Woolf at 646-291-4460 or mwoolf@nyodn.org.