Organs from drug addicts 'used in hospital transplants'
Pastor Dale Morgan
Organs from drug addicts 'used in hospital transplants'*
By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor
Last Updated: 6:14am GMT 10/12/2007
Hundreds of below standard hearts, lungs and kidneys have been taken
from drug addicts and transplanted into critically-ill patients, The
Daily Telegraph has been told.
Organs from drug addicts 'used in transplants'
Surgeons have renewed calls for a change in the law to presumed consent
Three per cent of the organs transplanted into patients in the past five
years came from donors with a history of drug abuse - some of whom died
from an overdose - figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act
have revealed.
One transplant surgeon said doctors were "desperate" for organs and had
to use some they would otherwise have rejected.
The findings sparked renewed calls for a change in the law to presumed
consent - in which everyone is included on the organ donor register
unless they specifically opt out.
Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, called for the change
earlier this year and the Department of Health ordered a taskforce to
investigate the proposal.
Drug addicts are more likely to have hepatitis or HIV.
Although the transplanted organs are screened, there is still a risk of
passing on an infection that has not yet shown up on tests. The quality
of the organs can also be affected, raising the risk of complications.
The figures released by UK Transplant, which runs the transplant
programme, show that between April 2002 and March 2007, 450 organs were
taken from donors with a history of drug abuse, including people
addicted to prescribed medication, over the counter drugs and illegal
narcotics.
In 14 cases the donor died of a drug overdose while 10 hearts were
transplanted from patients who had a history of heart disease or had
suffered a cardiac arrest before the organ was removed.
Of the 450 organs used, 212 were kidneys, 126 were livers and 39 were
hearts.
Over the same period, 14,261 organs were used in transplants, including
833 hearts.
Worryingly, one donor died from an overdose of paracetamol which can
cause severe liver damage yet the liver was transplanted into a patient.
A spokesman for UK Transplant said: "I can confirm the single liver
transplant from a donor who had taken a paracetamol overdose - the
database indicates the donor had a cardiac arrest, but not when.
"The liver was transplanted into a super-urgent case and no other organs
were retrieved from the donor, mainly for reasons of the history of drug
abuse."
The surgeon, Nadey Hakim, the head of transplant services at Hammersmith
Hospital in west London, said his unit did not usually accept organs
from drug abusers.
But doctors and patients who did accept organs in such circumstances
could not be blamed because often there was no other choice.
"We are getting desperate," he said. "We were much more careful 10 or 15
years ago because there were more donors. The age of donors is going up.
"The older the organ the more problems you are going to have. We tend
not to use organs from drug addicts."
Patient groups said the recipient often had no choice.
Tim Statham, the chief executive of the National Kidney Federation,
said: "If it extends life then we don't have an issue with organs that
are below 100 per cent."
The British Heart Foundation supports a move to presumed consent for
organ donation.
Chris Rudge, the managing director of UK Transplant, said a detailed
history was taken from all donors to establish if organs were fit for
transplant.
A Department of Health spokesman said: "We have asked the organ donation
taskforce to look into the issue of presumed consent."