Thousands of Transplant Recipients Benefit From Lifegift’s Most Productive Year

A record-breaking year by LifeGift Organ Donation Center helped extend or save the lives of literally thousands of organ and tissue transplant patients in Texas and beyond during the past year.

From Oct. 1, 2001 through Sept. 30, 2002, Houston-based LifeGift Organ Donation Center recovered organs from 206 deceased donors, enabling 774 organs to be recovered for transplant into patients who need them, a 21 percent increase in organs over its last fiscal year. In addition, the agency can point to strong performance by its tissue teams, recovering more than 1,600 donations of bone, skin, heart valves and veins. Those donations provided close to 10,000 tissue grafts.

“By working closely with Texas Medical Center transplant centers including Memorial Hermann Hospital, St. Luke’s Episcopal, Texas Children’s Hospital, and The Methodist Hospital, LifeGift is proud to have helped save or extend the lives of literally thousands of people,” said Sam Holtzman, LifeGift’s president and CEO. “Still, our enthusiasm is tempered by the great need and the fact that 15 Americans die each day waiting for an available organ.”

LifeGift has consistently ranked high among the nation’s 59 organ procurement organizations, and this year logged a 63 percent consent rate – those saying “yes” to donation. The national average is just above 50 percent.

More than 80,000 Americans currently sit on the transplant waiting list. Of those, 6,000 are Texans and close to 2,000 live in the LifeGift service area which includes Houston, Fort Worth, Lubbock and Amarillo, cities in which the nonprofit organization offices.

Not content to rest on its laurels, LifeGift has introduced several new initiatives, which the organization believes will increase the number of organs available for transplant candidates. The organization recently restructured its organization to focus its recovery efforts in selected hospitals with proven potential for donation by placing staff in 20 key transplant and trauma centers across the state.

This “in-house coordinators program” has proven to work. Following the program’s implementation in the mid-1990s at Houston’s Ben Taub General and Memorial Hermann Hospitals, LifeGift has recovered organs from an average 48 percent more donors each year.

Tissue recovery is a key program for LifeGift. Heart valves can be used for children with congenital heart defects; skin often is used for burn patients; cartilage and bone is transplanted into patients with cancer and with orthopedic injuries; and transplanted veins can restore blood flow for heart patients or those needing limb salvage.

“The real thanks should go to our donor families who make the courageous decision to donate their loved ones’ organs and tissue so that life might go on for others.” Holtzman added.

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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