Analysis Of Waiting For A Liver Transplant

The medical practice of organ transplantation has grown by leaps and bounds over the last 50 years. Each year the medical profession takes more risk with decisions regarding transplants, how to allocate for organs, and most recently conducting transplants on children with adult organs. “An organ transplantation is a surgical operation where a failing or damaged organ in the human body is removed and replaced with a new one” (Caplan, 2009). Not all organs can be transplanted. The term “organ transplant” typically refers to transplants of solid organs: heart, kidneys, liver, pancreas, and intestines. There are two ways of receiving an organ transplant: from a living human or an organ from a

In this society, organ transplant surgery has been perfected to where no risk is present. However, organs still have a high demand with low supply. In addition, the only people eligible to receive organs are those who came to their ailment at no fault of their own. In other words, they did not smoke, drink, or eat in manners that caused their diseased organs. The people who donate organs have to be perfectly healthy as well to eliminate unhealthy organs for donation.

For over 13 year I have worked in healthcare and I have seen multiple patients die from organ failure as they waited on the transplant list. I’ve seen patients lose their quality of life as they sit in hospitals for weeks and months at a time as they waited for a kidney transplant. I also know people who have donated the organs of their loved ones and were blessed to know that their loss was the beginning of another person’s life.

This paper is going to focus on the importance of getting a better way for Medicare to handle the needs of transplant patients. The current situation isn’t a good one. The patients are the ones that suffer while the medical insurance companies and centers keep making more and more money. This is showing to me how much of the healthcare has turned to be about that. The transplant centers are needed but there is so much red tape that they have to go through to be approved by Medicare it makes it hard for them to open. What seems like should be an easy fix sure isn’t when you look into it.

Liver Allocation is an ethical dilemma for healthcare providers and patients. An article published in the American Journal of Critical-Care Nurses entitled “The Power of The Liver Transplant Waiting List: A Case Presentation” discusses a 60 year old woman with cirrhosis was placed on the liver transplant list under the category “status 7”. Status 7 is an inactive state and are considered unsuitable to receive transplant surgery. Liver allocation is done by an organization called the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), and the way they rank patients to receive a transplant is by a Model End Staged Liver Disease (MELD). It is scored from 6 to 40, and those with a high scores are the ones to receive a liver transplant (Hansen, Yan, and Rosenkranz,

In his article, Are Alcoholics Less Deserving of Liver Transplantations, Daniel Brudney explores the morality of placing alcoholics with liver damage (caused by alcohol) lower on the donor list. The idea Brudney pushes is that by promulgating the health risks of alcohol consumption there will be less people with liver damage in need of a donor. His position holds alcoholics culpable and deserving of the consequences to follow, assuming information of possible outcomes due to excessive drinking have been provided and understood. This may be true if the information is repetitively communicated to people in their early teen years, however, providing crucial information to the public does not change the power of temptation and addiction towards alcohol.

The shortage of organ transplants has been an ongoing crisis for years; the growing list of patients awaiting transplants has no end in sight, and the number of people dying while they waste away on the waiting list is not going to go down unless something changes.Society has turned away from alternatives to our archaic organ donation program, but there are other options available.The transplant community and society as a whole need to step back and rethink--to adopt a more open-minded views on organs as a resource in order to save lives and make meaningful changes to the national transplant program.

Process of transplantation: “patient is identified as ill and organ failing, doctor assesses if eligible for transplant” (Ethics of Organ Transplantation, 2004, p. 6). “If so, doctor refers patient to local transplant center to be placed on the list” (Ethics of Organ Transplantation, 2004, p. 6). “The transplant center evaluates the patient’s health and mental status as well as the level of social support to see if the person is a viable candidate” (Ethics of Organ Transplantation, 2004, p. 6). “Organs can come from recently deceased people, cadavers, or living persons” (Ethics of Organ Transplantation, 2004, p. 6). “The waiting list for donors is maintained by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS)” (Ethics of Organ Transplantation, 2004, p. 6). Now that I’ve set the basic principle for what an organ transplant

Recent medical advances have greatly enhanced the ability to successfully transplant organs and tissue. Forty-five years ago the first successful kidney transplant was performed in the United States, followed twenty years later by the first heart transplant. Statistics from the United Network for Organ Sharing (ONOS) indicate that in 1998 a total of 20,961 transplants were performed in the United States. Although the number of transplants has risen sharply in recent years, the demand for organs far outweighs the supply. To date, more than 65,000 people are on the national organ transplant waiting list and about 4,000 of them will die this year- about 11 every day- while waiting for a chance to extend their life through organ donation

Throughout time Organ transplanting has been an important medical procedure that has been present, not only in the United States, but around the globe. It is the process of surgically removing an organ from on patient and then transplanting it into the other. This practice is usually used when a recipient’s own organ fails to function properly or has

Organ transplantation is a term that most people are familiar with. When a person develops the need for a new organ either due to an accident or disease, they receive a transplant, right? No, that 's not always right. When a person needs a new organ, they usually face a long term struggle that they may never see the end of, at least while they are alive. The demand for transplant organs is a challenging problem that many people are working to solve. Countries all over the world face the organ shortage epidemic, and they all have different laws regarding what can be done to solve it. However, no country has been able to create a successful plan without causing moral and ethical dilemmas.

The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network is a public and private organization that was created in 1984. The organization was created by the National Organ Transplant Act. The network joins all professionals that support and who are involved in the organ donation and transplantation system throughout the United States. The institution also connects people that have signed donor cards and who also support the system of organ donation and transplantation. The main goal of the OPTN is to raise the number of organ transplants and to improve the access to organ transplants as well. The organization also thrives to create higher survival rates for after a transplantation and to ensure patient safety. The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network has supported over 30,000 organ transplant surgeries, those of which have saved thousands of lives. The OPTN has contributed to the success of organ transplantation for many years and it continues to do

How do you feel when you have to wait for something that you really, really want? What if it was something you couldn’t live without? Imagine you are lying in a hospital bed and you have no choice but to impatiently wait for that one organ you and your body are depending on to survive. Many people face this struggle every day. These people are waiting on a list for their perfect match… the perfect person to be their organ donor. An organ donor is a person who has an organ, or several organs, removed in ordered to be transplanted into another person.

The Madison Veterans Hospital has a goal to become more accessible to its liver transplant patients. Liver Transplant patients are an obscure sup group of veterans to pay attention to. The Madison Veterans Hospital focuses on liver transplant patients because it is a new program within the hospital and is the second most common type of transplant. Liver transplants in veterans are primarily a result of hepatitis C, Nonalcoholic Steatohepatis, and liver cancer. Vietnam veterans are most likely to undergo liver transplants because they were exposed to Agent Orange, which leads to liver disease. Since the Madison Veterans Hospital is one of six veterans hospitals in the United States to provide liver transplant it is working diligently to improve the unit. A perfect improvement for the Madison’s Veterans is currently being done at the Pittsburgh Veterans Hospital in Pennsylvania. It is currently using a virtual care program that utilizes Clinical Video Telehealth, Store and Forward Telehealth, Home Telehealth, Secure Messaging, E-Consults, and SCAN-ECHO. This program allows patients and specialists to converse without making rural patients travel to the hospital. It uses video conferencing to make the process simpler. Madison’s Veterans Hospital would try this innovation on liver transplant patients; if it worked well within the first year it would expand to all transplant units. Before this innovation could be

In 2002, the Model for End Stage Liver Disease (MELD) system for liver allocation was implemented and it resulted in lower waiting list death rates among recipients without changing 1-year graft and patient survival (19, 20), including those > 65 years (21) in comparison to the pre-MELD era. However, functional status and long-term clinical outcomes among older liver transplant recipients in the MELD era are unclear.