FOR PUBLIC RELEASE: March 17, 2005
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ANNUAL HRSA TRANSPLANT DATA REPORT RELEASED
Organ Waiting List Grows Faster than Number of Available Organs
Ann Arbor, MI -- This week the Health Resources and Services Administration of the US Department of Health and Human Services released its 14th Annual Report on Transplant Data, summarizing official and definitive data on solid organ transplantation in the United States from 1994 to 2003. The new transplant data report provides data vital to the entire transplant community, including patients, medical professionals, and researchers in many fields. It was prepared jointly by the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) and the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN).
During 2003, more than 25,000 organs were transplanted in the US -- over 18,000 from deceased donors and almost 7,000 from living donors. During the same period, more than 7,000 patients were reported to have died while waiting for a transplant. The total number of patients awaiting organs reached a new high of 86,355 in 2003. The number of patients awaiting organs continues to grow faster than the number of organs transplanted.
Improved Outcomes for Liver Candidates and Recipients; Increasing Numbers of People With Functioning Grafts
Death rates for patients awaiting livers have decreased considerably in the last 10 years, from 225 to 124 deaths per 1,000 patient years. Death rates following liver transplantation have also shown a declining trend over the decade, dropping from 197 to 156 deaths per 1,000 patient years.
According to a new set of tables included in this year's report, the number of people living with a functioning allograft has more than doubled over the past decade, rising from 69,354 in 1994 to 153,844 in 2003. While the majority of these recipients have kidney grafts, the prevalence of those living with functioning grafts has been increasing more quickly for most other organs. Compared with 1994, there were three times as many lung recipients living in 2003, as well as six times as many pancreas recipients and eight times as many intestine recipients.
Changing Sources of Donor Kidneys; Improved Lung Allocation
The use of expanded criteria donor (ECD) kidneys -- those with higher risk of long-term failure due to donor age and medical history -- has continued to grow in response to the shortage of organs. ECD kidneys were used in 16% of kidney transplants in 2003, up from 11% in 1994 and 15% in 2002. The number of donors after cardiac death has also been growing, from 57 in 1994 to 189 in 2002 and 271 in 2003.
A new lung allocation system, approved in June 2004, is expected to maximize the survival benefit of lung transplantation. The new system is not based solely on waiting time, but incorporates a measure of how long patients are expected to live after receiving a transplant (versus remaining on the waiting list). Future editions of this annual report and other SRTR analyses will evaluate the success of this new system.
Comprehensive Report Measures Key Trends Over Time
The report features 10 chapters written by more than 50 national experts in the field of transplantation, analyzing data and identifying trends in transplantation over the last decade. A special-focus chapter in this year's report examines various ways to measure organ donation rates by donation service area, which has important implications for improving overall rates of organ donation. All 10 chapters, coordinated by the SRTR, have also just been published as a special issue of the peer-reviewed American Journal of Transplantation.
These chapters provide clinical insight into the extensive series of data tables that form the main reference component of the report. These tables, more than 250 in number, include a decade's worth of information documenting trends and recent comparisons of the following: donation and transplantation rates; demographic and medical characteristics of donors, recipients, and those on the waiting list; time spent on waiting lists; and success rates of transplantation in terms of patient survival and survival of transplanted organs. These tables also include information about immunosuppression therapies and cancer-related data.
As in 2004, the OPTN/SRTR Annual Report is being published exclusively in electronic formats -- on a CD-ROM and on the web. The electronic report improves on the previous paper-based publication and last year's electronic version through improved navigation, interactive indexes, and new guides and glossaries. The electronic version includes HTML and PDF versions of all of the data tables and text chapters. The full report is available at the SRTR's and OPTN's web sites, www.ustransplant.org and www.optn.org; free CD-ROMs of the report may be ordered at either site.
The OPTN is administered by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), in Richmond, Virginia; the SRTR is administered by the University Renal Research and Education Association (URREA), in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in collaboration with the University of Michigan. UNOS and URREA collaborated to produce this report under contract with the Health Resources and Services Administration, Healthcare Systems Bureau, Division of Transplantation.
For a free copy of the Annual Report, please write to srtr@urrea.org. For the Report on the State of Transplantation, visit http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/toc/ajt/5/4p2.
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