UNOS and OPTN Send New Liver Proposal to HHS
WASHINGTON, D.C.-The joint board of directors of the United Network for Organ Sharing and the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network has submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) a proposal that represents a major change in the way donor livers are allocated in the United States.
HHS will now decide whether to adopt the plan.
"This significant proposal, designed to enhance fairness in the national organ allocation system, creates a more objective, continuous scale to better identify medically urgent patients awaiting a liver transplant," UNOS said in a statement.
The scale, which UNOS described as more refined than the current medical urgency codes used in liver allocation, would rank liver patients based on medical test results that suggest that a patient would die soon without a liver transplant. However, the plan will not affect patients in the currently designated status 1-those with the most urgent need for livers.
"The impact of the new disease severity scale will be far-reaching and will achieve key goals in enhancing access to transplant for sicker patients and lessening the priority of waiting time in allocation," said UNOS President Patricia Adams, MD. UNOS and HHS were at odds for several years over how to best allocate solid organs--and livers in particular. However, the new UNOS proposal still does not address one of the key issues in the debate: enlarging the geographic areas over which livers would be offered to the sickest patients first.
"The OPTN/UNOS Liver and Intestinal Organ Transplantation Committee had extensively considered 17 proposed alternatives to distribution areas but concluded that no single proposal was able to significantly offset underlying differences in organ availability and patterns of patient listing for transplantation in different areas of the U.S.," UNOS said.
The Associated Press reported on November 16 that HHS officials "are prepared to accept the
[UNOS] proposal for now."
For Your Information:
View the UNOS statement at www.unos.org/Newsroom/archive_newsrelease_20001116_board.htm.
Also see
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/hsn/20001118/hl/new_rules_for_liver_transplants_proposed_1.html.
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