April 18, 2001 - The Health and Human Services (HHS) Department yesterday kicked off a nationwide campaign to increase organ and tissue donation. The program centers on the
"Workplace Partnership for Life", which will encourage businesses and unions to promote donation. Seventeen companies and one large union, the United Autoworkers, have agreed to implement the program.

Here is the press release from the HHS.

The number of living organ donors increased 16% in 2000, while the number of cadaver donors increased 3%.

April 16, 2001 - This Boston Globe article is about individuals who volunteer to donate organs, but are screened out after psychological evaluations.

Approximately 10% of potential volunteer donors are rejected because they are mentally unbalanced, unrealistic about the risks, or pressured by others.

April 12, 2001 - The New England Medical Center has created an organ donation program that allows you to donate one of your kidneys to a stranger and, in return, your loved one will move up on their waiting list.

Here is another article from the Boston Globe that describes the experiences of the first family that participated in this program.

March 10, 2001 - On March 7, the US House of Representatives unanimously passed legislation to provide grants to "living organ donors". The vote on the bill was 404-0.

Click here to view the text of the legislation and its current status.

There is a growing gap between the number of organ transplants and the number of patients waiting for an organ transplant.

Citing that growing gap, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said that he would make increasing the nation's supply of donor organs a focus of his initial months in office.

Here is the current transplant waiting list numbers from the United Network Organ Sharing (UNOS) web site.

Late last year, the National Kidney Foundation (US) released a new Living Donor Statement that focuses on donors� physical and emotional well-being. Here is the abstract of the Guidelines from the Live Organ Donor Consensus Group that have been developed to ensure the welfare of living organ donors.

Here is an easy-to-understand guide for kidney transplant patients and donors from Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

In March of 2000, WebMD broadcast over the Internet a sister-to-sister kidney transplant using the laparascopic donor nephrectomy procedure. Click here to view the procedure.

There has always been a shortage of cadaver kidneys for transplantation. For those willing to donate one of their own kidneys, it meant facing a great deal of pain and a long recovery. Many said the surgery was harder on the donor than the recipient.

Over the last few years, transplant surgeons have been perfecting a new procedure, the laparscopic nephrectomy, which greatly reduces the sizes of the incisions and the injury to the donor. Compare the stories of this laparoscopic nephrectomy donor and this traditional open nephrectomy donor.

Here is an abstract from the March 2001 issue of the Journal of Urology that compares the outcomes of the two nephrectomy techniques.

Here is a listing of articles on the laparoscopic nephrectomy procedure from the latest scientific journals (PubMed search).



[This message has been edited by Gary Peterson (edited 04-18-2001).]