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Melanie Cole (Host): Sometimes myths and misconceptions about organ, eye, and tissue donation can prevent someone from signing up. But so many lives could be saved if people really knew the true facts about donation. My guest today, is Christine Palms. She’s the director of Transplant Services at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center. Welcome to the show Christine. How important is organ donation and that people understand what it is and how it works?

Christine Palms (Guest): Organ donation is extremely important. The facts are this. Currently today, we have more than 120,000 people waiting for a lifesaving organ transplant. And more than 4000 of those individuals are people from New Jersey. And what’s so important is that organ transplantation gives thousands of adults and children the second chance at life and the ability to enhance their quality of life. Unfortunately, the need for those organs outweigh availability. And so, that is why organ donation is so important. Transplantation centers wouldn’t be able to move forward and provide this gift of life without organ donors, both cadaveric donors who decide to most generously give their gift and then also living donations. The impact of that gift affects so many lives.

Melanie: What organs can be donated? Please clear up for us, what living donation organs are available and what somebody would donate after death and how important is it that you tell your family about your wishes to donate an organ?

Christine: Okay, so for living donations, I think most people are familiar with kidney donors. So, we are able to at this point in time, we have living kidney donors. We also have living liver donors. Kidney donation is most popular, most people know about that. And what happens is we look at individuals who are extremely healthy and who want to move forward and make an impact in saving either people that they know, someone that they are related to or we even have people who just out of the generosity of their heart, want to help save someone and impact someone’s life and we have altruistic donors. They are nondirected. They give us a call and say heh, we want to help give the gift that keeps on giving and perhaps helps save someone as well. So, living donors, kidney or liver also make an impact on help saving people who are on the list. Like I stated, the national list is so large, we have so many people waiting for a kidney transplant, 82% of that list of 116,000 to 120,000 individuals are people actually waiting for a kidney transplant and so even though we have had more than 30,000 some transplants performed this year; we only have a small portion of people who have been able to receive a kidney transplant. So, people who come forward and decide to donate either a lobe of their liver or a kidney; will impact that volume of people.

Melanie: Christine, let’s break up a few of the myths surrounding organ donation. Do the donor families have to pay for organ donation?

Christine: No, there is no charge for the donation.

Melanie: People are afraid that if they are going to donate their body to science or donate any tissues or organs after they die; that doctors might let them die so that they can be a donor.

Christine: Absolutely not. So, there is no cost to be an organ and tissue donor. Donation is an absolute gift. For those individuals who choose to donate their bodies to science, absolutely it’s a gift. It is used for research purposes to help look at what can we do to help solve things where people have illnesses or rare diseases where we can utilize science and technology to help prevent these things from occurring in the future. So, absolutely, the fact that there is a cost for or the myth that organs are sold for profit or a gain is absolutely not the truth. And one of the things I want to also talk about is the fact that when someone comes into the hospital and they have such a severe brain or traumatic brain injury, that the individuals at every facility throughout the nation, the country and the world, do what they can to actually save individuals. It is only when a determination is made that the prognosis is so grave and it’s irreversible that any discussions of organ donation may take place and that’s only if the person is eligible to become an organ donor.

Melanie: If someone has a medical condition, does that preclude them from being an organ donor?

Christine: So, what happens is that we will say that everyone is pretty much – you shouldn’t think that you are not eligible to be an organ donor. What will happen is that, in the country right now, we have had organ donors over the age of 80, maybe there is some record that there was an organ donor with someone who was over 90 years old. What happens is that you should not assume that if you have diabetes or hypertension or even if you have had cancer; it just depends on the level of cancer, how long were you out. You should always move forward with the gift of wanting to be an organ donor. And at the time that you are evaluated, depending on what’s going on, every center will evaluate. Look at the medical social history, determine and do evaluation tests like you would do if you go to a medical practice or a facility. They will make sure that the gift is optimized and to make sure there are screening protocols to make sure that the organs recovered for transplant are transplanted in a safe manner.

Melanie: And what about for the family, if you do sign your donor card and the family is against it or not sure whether this is ethical or against their religion or disfiguring. What do you want donors who are considering donating organs in the even of their death or something like that; what do you want them to tell their families, Christine?

Christine: What I say is that organ donation is a way to make a difference. It’s powerful. And if you make the determination to become an organ donor; it is so important to share your decision. We can sign up for a registry. There are about 2.5 million people already registered in the state of New Jersey. People can always go to organdonor.gov and express their wish to become a donor and sign up that way. And even if you do that, and what we call you have consented previously, or prior and that is known and that is registered; we can look on your license and everyone can see that. We can look on the registry. We still tell everyone, share your decision with your family. What happens is that at that time, where this incident happened, and people are grieving; it’s a time of crisis and then time is of the essence; you have so many emotions that are happening at such a short period of time. If you share the decision and your family knows beforehand, or you loved ones that this is something that I want to do, it’s so important to me, this is impactful, this is how I want to pay it forward; what happens at that time that those discussions are being held, those first few conversations at that critical time, at that crisis at a critical point, then it’s easier to acknowledge the gift and move forward and make sure it comes into fruition. So, I can’t stress enough, share your decision with your family members so they can definitely understand and accept that if the opportunity becomes available and there is a chance for you to donate; that everyone is on board and supports your gift.

Melanie: And tell us about the Blessed Mother statue at Lourdes Medical Center and what happens when there is a transplant at the hospital.

Christine: So, what happens is that the Blessed Mother statue is lit so as a recognition for both of our transplant recipients and also those who have donated; each of those events are significant, are important, are powerful and impactful, so as part of the recognition for the gift of life and then also as part of the recognition for the second chance at life, right; we acknowledge that, and our Blessed Mother statue is lit. Once again, organ donation doesn’t happen as often. Only 1% of the population can move forward to become an organ donor. Going back to how many people are on our waiting list 116,000 people to 120,000 people; and we have only performed 30,000 transplants this year, there is a disparity in that amount. So, as many people that are added to our list yearly, the amount of people that get transplanted, is a fragment of that. So, we want to as much as we can promote awareness of the gift and promote recipients of the gift.

Melanie: It’s lovely that it lights up and what a great awareness campaign and Lourdes Medical Center has been recognized for their awareness campaign by the government, yes?

Christine: Yes.

Melanie: Tell us about that.

Christine: So, recently, we partner with the Sharing Network and one of the things in partnering with the Sharing Network and that’s the organ recovery organization for New Jersey for a majority of New Jersey in conjunction with the Gift of Life which services a part of southern New Jersey and also Pennsylvania; is that we partner with our organ recovery organization to say we understand that transplant centers cannot exist without this partnership with organ donation recovery organizations. So, what we do, we partner with the Sharing Network to say what can we do to raise awareness about the importance of organ donation? Whether it is through registries, whether it is through promoting different activities, whether it is through promoting how you can go to the DMV to sign up for your donor card, how we can educate our recipients about the importance of the gift that they are signing up to receive; to try to bring some awareness to both sides that we can’t exist without one another and we do these various campaigns to helping through with registration, having events here, having donors come and speak, having recipients come and speak to partners in the community and people here at our facility. So different supportive measures that we do throughout the year and because of that; we received platinum recognition for our support of all the initiatives for organ donation awareness throughout the year. It’s important to us, as a transplant center to recognize everyone who makes this happen, who makes this gift happen and then what we do is, we try to recognize our heroes and be a part of that process. That’s something that we will continue to do moving forward.

Melanie: So, wrap it up for us and just summarize the importance of organ donation and what you want people to know about donating organs so that we have broken up a few of these myths. Clear it all up for us.

Christine: It is important that for people to understand that we have, once again, close to 120,000 people waiting for a lifesaving transplant. Locally, we have more than 4,000 people right here in New Jersey waiting for a lifesaving organ transplant. And that can be someone you know, it can be someone in your neighborhood, it can be someone that you attend church with. It can be your neighbor, it can be someone you see at the grocery store. It’s impactful for people to know that because of this amount of people waiting and then the amount of people who have actually been transplanted, 22 people die and once again, I would like to say that, 22 people die each day waiting on this list because once again, what the need is and what’s available is still a disparity between that. It’s important for people to understand that it’s the generosity, it’s a gift. Organ donation is extremely powerful, extremely impactful. I see it as a way to pay it forward. It’s a commitment, but it’s a commitment knowing that I can make a decision now to help save someone and that can be anyone from a two-month-old to a 27-year-old to a 75-year-old. And if people take the opportunity and want to find our more information about this; I definitely encourage them to go to various resources and one of those resources is organdonor.gov. You can find additional information and also on that website, you will have the ability, if you decide to move forward with making the gift, it will give you the ability to register and to become an organ donor. Make the gift. Share your decision. You have the power to save lives.

Melanie: Thank you so much Christine, for being with us today. This is Lourdes Health Talk and for more information please visit www.lourdesnet.org , that’s www.lourdesnet.org . This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening.