Wait lists outnumber transplants: report

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This article was published 06/12/2019 (2206 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Despite a rise in organ transplants, people are still dying as they wait for organs to become available, a new report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information shows.

In 2018, 223 people died while on a wait list for an organ transplant, even though there were 2,782 organ-transplant procedures performed in Canada that year, an increase of 33 per cent since 2009, CIHI said in a release on Thursday.

At the end of 2018, however, there were 4,351 people on wait lists for transplants.

CIHI said the increased need for organ transplantation is in part being driven by the rising number of Canadians diagnosed with end-stage kidney disease, which rose 32 per cent over the 10 years studied.

CIHI’s annual Canadian Organ Replacement Register report, which includes statistics on all donations for kidney, heart, lung, liver, pancreas and intestine transplantations, found that kidneys (1,706) and livers (533) were the top organs transplanted in 2018, followed by lungs (361), hearts (189) and pancreases (57).

As of the end of last year, more patients were on wait lists for kidneys (3,150) and livers (527), compared with lungs (270), hearts (157) and pancreases (156).

“There’s people waiting for a very, very long time,” said Lisa Edwardson, the Westman regional co-ordinator for the Manitoba branch of the Kidney Foundation of Canada.

Edwardson said Manitoba has the longest wait times for organ transplants, and 76 per cent are for kidneys. She said she knows of some people who have waited up to nine years for a kidney transplant.

Once a person reaches end-stage renal failure, the only options are a kidney transplant or dialysis.

That’s why it’s vitally important to let people know your wishes regarding organ donation after your death and to register online with Transplant Manitoba at signupforlife.ca, Edwardson said.

Last year, there were 555 living donors (people who donated a kidney or a lobe of liver) and 762 deceased donors in Canada. The number of deceased donors increased by 56 per cent between 2009 and 2018, while the number of living donors remained stable.

“Though our transplant procedures are going up, there’s also new factors that are contributing to more people needing organs,” said Michael Terner, program lead for CIHI’s Canadian Organ Replacement Register.

Terner said the rise in kidney failure has been fuelled by increasing rates of diabetes, obesity and an aging population.

Patients on dialysis wait an average of 3.8 years after starting the treatment to receive a kidney transplant, he added.

While the number of living donors per million Canadians has for the most part plateaued in recent years, Terner said the rate of organ donations from deceased people has jumped by 42 per cent.

Some have credited Logan Boulet, a 21-year-old man killed in the bus crash involving the Humboldt Broncos hockey team, with a surge in donor signups. He signed up weeks before he and 15 others on the team’s bus died in April 2018, and his organs later benefited six people.

Canadian Blood Services estimates that within two months of his death, more than 150,000 people registered to become organ donors, in what’s been dubbed the “Boulet Effect.”

But Terner said much of the spike is due to a 2006 move to broaden the criteria for deceased donations beyond brain-death cases to include patients whose hearts have permanently stopped beating.

In Canada, donation after cardiac death (DCD) has led to an increase of almost 430 per cent in the number of DCD organs used for transplantation, from 42 in 2009 to 222 in 2018, the CIHI reported.

Each deceased donor can provide up to eight organs for transplantation, while living donors can provide a kidney or part of their liver.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information is an independent, not-for-profit organization that works closely with federal, provincial and territorial partners and stakeholders throughout Canada to gather, package and disseminate information to inform policy, management, care and research.

» brobertson@brandonsun.com, with files from The Canadian Press