Organ donations from fatal overdoses growing
1 in 11 donors across country has a history of injected-drug use
Lori Blankenship knows her son made bad decisions. But just weeks after his fatal drug overdose about a month ago, she was reminded of a good choice he made. He had registered as an organ donor. Luis Burks’ kidneys and liver went to three people, and his lungs were given to research, putting him in a donor category that is growing faster than any other.
One in 11 deceased organ donors across the country last year had a history of injecting drugs and died of a drug overdose, a rate that has more than tripled in less than a decade. It’s closer to one in six in Maryland.
That means Maryland has “one of the highest rates in the country,” said Charles Alexander, president and CEO of the Living Legacy Foundation, which coordinates organ donations across much of the state. “It’s sadly reflective of the epidemic.”
Overdose deaths, largely from heroin and powerful prescription painkillers such as fentanyl, have reached record highs across the country. Maryland had one of the biggest surges in the country, with 1,259 fatal overdoses last year, twice the number in 2010.
Nationally, donations from those who overdosed from injected drugs are the fourth-largest organ donor group, according to data from the United Network for Organ Sharing, which coordinates donations. Drug overdoses eclipsed homicide victims years ago.
Drug overdoses rank behind people who died of natural causes — the largest group of donors — as well as car crash victims and those who committed suicide. Car crash donors have declined as auto safety improved. Blankenship said being able to save someone else’s life provides families a silver lining to their tragedies. Living Legacy’s Alexander said three-quarters of families asked to donate a loved one’s organs do so.
Often Living Legacy doesn’t have to ask because drug users register to be organ donors at a higher rate than other types of donors, he said. About 70 percent of the donors who fatally overdosed in Maryland had registered themselves, compared with about 50 percent of all donors overall.
Dr. Dorry Segev, a Johns Hopkins Hospital transplant surgeon, said people ages 18 to 34 have been particularly hard hit by the drug epidemic, and young adults are internet-savvy and more likely to go online and register.
Spurred by another Hopkins surgeon in 2012, Facebook began allowing users to share their donor status with special status buttons and to link to state department of motor vehicle websites to register, a move that boosted signups 21-fold in one day.
The organs from drug overdoses have helped to meet demand in a donor system that doesn’t have enough supply, said Segev, an associate professor of surgery and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
The organs also tend to be healthier and more durable than those of older donors, which frequently show signs of age and disease.
Doctors are often more concerned about the lifestyle of a drug user. The federal government labels them “infectious risk donors” because they are more likely to be infected with HIV or hepatitis. Screening organs for disease has vastly improved in recent years, but there’s still a slight risk that infections could go undetected.
Segev said in almost all cases the risk of infection for a recipient is far lower than the risk of death. For instance, the risk is lower than staying on dialysis for someone with malfunctioning kidneys, the most in-demand organs.
“The take-home message from the patient standpoint is the risk of unintended transmission of disease is exceedingly low and the benefits these organs bring are very high,” he said.
At Hopkins, doctors increasingly rely on this pool of donors. Up to 40 percent of the transplants from deceased donors now comes from infectious-risk donors, likely the highest rate of any hospital in the nation, said Segev, who also pioneered HIV-positive organ donation to HIV-positive recipients.
No transplant patient at Hopkins has been infected with diseases from donated organs.
Still, not everyone wants an organ from a