(CNN)My CNN colleagueRichard Rossrecently needed a kidney transplant. This is the second time in nearly 25 years. The email announcing that he had the organs was very grateful to his donorand made me smile and cry a little.
I was happy over the moon in Ross. Not only is he alive, he is a recipient of human tenderness and witnesses it. Organs are a limited resource, as are donors (living and dead) who are willing to share them.
I also have a donor to thank me.
It took a few days before I fell into a coma and was more likely to die.
However, surgeons, social workers, and managers have taken action. In the next few days, they came across the liver from a young man who was the best match in terms of organ size, blood type, and other factors.
The time frame for transplanting his liver was 8-12 hours after his death. Thankfully, he has stated that he wants to be a donor, or his family has made that decision. After many conversations, tests, and almost eight hours of operation, my life has changed forever.
Timing is everything
Thank you very much. Organs are not just gifts. And there is no guarantee that it will work properly.
I don't have much personal information about donors. Only his medical problems, age and nationality. I'd like to get in touch with his family someday, but for now I hope the thank-you note sent through the organ procurement organization that manages local organ recovery activities has been well received.
I am also grateful to the medical team. I live in an era when transplants are common and often successful. Grandaunt died of liver failure in 1959. Only a few years before the procedure for replacing such organs became possible. She was only 49 years old. The first successful human liver transplant was performed in 1963, but liver transplant patients lived for more than a year in 1967.
Currently, survival rates are high and recipients live much longer on average. There are protocols for determining who can give and receive organs, but the need has historically outweighed the availability.
I am worried that black, Latino, and low-income patients are less likely to receive an organ transplant than white or high-income patients. It also reduces your chances of becoming a donor. Reasons for this include historical distrust of the healthcare system.
I wanted to know what is preventing people in the vulnerable community from getting a transplant and what is being done to solve the problem.
I wanted to standardize my experience with the porting system, rather than feeling like a miracle.
Organ donation can be higher
Most donors don't look like me
He said minorities such as Koreans, Samoa, and Tongan Americans have had particular difficulty finding organs.
People of different races match each other, but members of the same ethnic group tend to be compatible with respect to tissue, blood type, and other biological factors. A good match between the donor and the recipient leads to better results for the patient and the transplant system itself. The more people of different racial backgrounds register for donations, the more likely it is that more transplant candidates will find the organ when they need it.
Most Popular Organs
"Whites are more likely to be transplanted than blacks. The most common organ listed so far is the kidney, the only non-white person on the list. It is also an organ of. " Alain B, Professor and Director of the Qualitative Core Center for Applied Surgical and Transplant Research in NYU. Massy said in an email.
Listed
The biggest problem is "getting on the port list". He is the Medical Director of Transplant Services at Thomas Jefferson University, and not riding it can be an obstacle to transplant fairness.
"Blacks on dialysis are less likely to be on the waiting list for kidney transplants than whites on dialysis," Massy said in an email.
Kaplan said that inequality in general health and access to health care (problems related to the history of socio-economic status and discrimination) is who gets the organs and who needs the organs first. It also affects whether or not.
"Poor minority-Native Americans in the reservation, poor people in downtown Brooklyn, poor Hispanics like Corpus Christi, Texas. Many undocumented people," Kaplan said. .. Due to the high obesity rate, high blood pressure is uncontrolled and (they) suffer from more diabetes.
There is another cause, according to Dr. Juan Carlos Caicedo, founder and director of the Hispanic Transplant Program at Northwestern University. Most US transplant centers do not implement a multicultural or multilingual care approach.
"Only 10% of these programs have websites that translate different languages other than English," he said.
According to a Caicedo study, centers incorporating multilingual and culturally sensitive care have succeeded in making more Hispanic patients a living donor.
"White patients are most likely to find an exact match. 79%.The least likely to match is the 29% black and African-American community, "Yolangco added. Asia Pacific Islanders have a 47% chance of finding a match, Hispanic or Latin Americans have a 48% chance of matching, and Native Americans have a 60% chance of matching.
Unfortunately, according to Kaplan, the need for transplantation between specific groups exceeds the number of organs available. He said it affects the patient's ability to find good matches, but language, class, and race are also unfair if they limit access to transplant treatment.
Accept a second chance
The point of the transplant system is to keep more people alive and healthy. Wage earners and people who do not speak English as their mother tongue.
My new liver gave me a second chance. It involves more doctor appointments and more fear of the unpredictability of life. However, I am also working to raise awareness of colored races for organ donation and to increase their affection for organ donors, especially those who have saved my life.
