Transplant numbers on the rise

OPIOID ADDICTION COULD BE FACTOR IN INCREASE

Amid the growing death toll of Canada’s ongoing opioid epidemic, there’s evidence of a correlating increase in the number of healthy human organs available for transplant.

The agency that manages organ donations and transplants in British Columbia recently began tracking the data after physicians there began to see more organs coming from patients who died of drug overdoses.

B.C. Transplant says one-quarter of the organs transplanted in the first six weeks of this year were donated by a patient who died of a fentanyl overdose. The agency also says out of the 51 people in B.C. who donated at least one organ after death between Jan. 1 and June 8, 25 had a positive toxicology test.

Not all died of an overdose, nor did they all use opioids, but the spokeswoman for B.C. Transplant says the agency is definitely seeing an increase in organs from opioidrelated deaths and is continuing to track and analyze the data.

The agency doesn’t have comparison data on fentanyl deaths and organ donors from previous years because it hadn’t started tracking it yet.

B.C. has been ground zero of the opioid epidemic in Canada, with 575 deaths from fentanyl alone in 2016 — five times the number of 2015 deaths.

Across the country, Canada saw an estimated 2,500 opioid-related deaths in 2016.

There is reluctance in the medical community to talk about the transplant issue. BC Transplant issued a written statement but no spokesperson was going to be made available to comment.

“It’s heartbreaking any time someone dies suddenly in a way that makes them a candidate to become an organ donor — it’s remarkable that the legacy of some of these people is giving the gift of life to someone waiting for a transplant,” the statement said.