Organ donation hit by ‘squeamishness’
HEALTH: Patients in need of surgery to save their sight could miss out on treatment because organ donors are reluctant for their eyes to be used after they die. NHS figures show that one in 10 donors are opting out of donating their eyes.
PATIENTS IN need of surgery to save their sight could miss out on life-changing treatment because organ donors are reluctant for their eyes to be used after they die.
NHS figures show that one in 10 donors are opting out of donating their eyes, despite being willing for other organs including hearts, livers and kidneys to be passed on.
NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) has also warned that families are not willing to give consent for loved ones’ eyes to be removed. This is adding to a shortage of corneas, the clear outer part of the eye used in transplants.
Emma Winstanley, the lead nurse at NHSBT’s tissue and eye services, said: “It is a phenomenon which we call the ‘yuck factor’ – some people are squeamish about eyes.
“So what we find is some people are willing to donate organs and other tissues like heart valve, bone and tendons, but sometimes when you ask a family member about eyes they can say, ‘You can have anything you want, but not the eyes’.
“It’s within our culture about eyes being the ‘windows to the soul’ but actually, when you really think about it, you could be saving somebody’s sight or be giving them the gift of sight.”
In the last year 3,504 people in England have had their sight restored through cornea transplants. A single eye donor can help restore or improve the sight of 10 people.
NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) said it must get 90 donations a week to meet the need for sight-saving transplant operations. The organisation needs to have about 350 corneas in its eye banks – based in Manchester and Bristol – to meet demand.
But from the start of 2018 until November 23, the average number of corneas stored at any given time was 307.
Paediatrician Dr Victoria Parsonson, 35, from Birmingham, almost lost her sight before she received a cornea transplant which helped her continue working as a doctor.
She was diagnosed with keratoconus, a progressive eye disease which causes distorted and blurred vision, when she was 16.
“I was devastated. All I ever wanted to be was a doctor,” she said. But in 2001 she had the cornea transplant at Bristol Eye Hospital. Dr Parsonson added: “Having a transplant completely changed my life.
“It helped me to help other people. I like to think that I have been given the gift of sight and I hope in my career I am able to also give something back to people.
“My donor and their family are amazing and I can’t thank them enough for what they have done for me.”
The cornea, the part of the eye which helps to focus light, and the sclera, the white part of the eye, can both be donated for use in reconstruction surgery.
Other donated eye tissue is used for research and development, but the eye is never transplanted whole.
People can donate their corneas up to 24 hours after they die and, unlike other organ donations, it is not necessary for them to die in a hospital intensive care unit or A&E department to become a donor.
Donation can take place after death in hospital, in hospices or in funeral homes.
Cancer patients and people who have eye problems themselves like short-sightedness can also be donors.
Eye donors can be almost any age, with an upper limit of about 85 in Britain, which is around the time the cornea cell count falls.
You could be giving somebody the gift of sight.
Nurse Emma Winstanley, of NHS Blood and Trasnplant.