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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Web-based organ donor registry to 'save lives'

By: Bruce Owen

Posted: 04/20/2011 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Theresa Oswald (right) with Kristin Millar, who is waiting for a new heart. (KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

You'd never know it by meeting her, but Kristin Millar needs a heart.

The 27-year-old Winnipegger went into sudden heart failure about a year ago, the initial symptom just severe stomach pain.

Millar said she had an emergency operation to have a battery-powered internal pump -- a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) -- surgically implanted.

"I like to say I'm not sick, I'm just accessorized," Millar said Tuesday, shortly after the province announced it will set up a secure, web-based registry to allow organ donors to record their wishes online. The registry will be operational within a year.

British Columbia is the only province with such a registry.

Millar said the LVAD keeps her alive and active -- she'll participate in the Manitoba Marathon, brisk walking not running -- but the machine does not replace a new heart. "I live with the possibility of stroke, right heart failure, infection and machine failure," she said.

Manitobans need to sign organ donor cards, she said, adding the province's new registry will increase awareness so that more people will do just that.

"The initiative that the government has taken today will save people's lives. It could very well save my own," she said.

Dr. Brendan McCarthy, medical director at Transplant Manitoba, said what's even more vital is that people inform family members they want to donate their organs. "If you stated you wanted to be an organ donor, about 90 per cent of the time the family will consent, as opposed to 40 per cent of the time if they don't know what the family member's wishes were," he said.

McCarthy said the new registry will give physicians immediate access to a dying person's wishes on organ transplant, much in the same way they have access to a person's medication.

"Now when it comes to discussions with the family, it will be very good that we'll be able to tell them what their loved one's wishes were if, for some reason, they never discussed that with their family," he said. "When it comes to organ donation, it is still the families who provide consent."

Dr. Peter Nickerson, former medical director of Transplant Manitoba, said the new registry will allow people to sign up via the Internet at any time to be an organ donor. It will require two pieces of identification to register.

Only one to two per cent of the population are able to be organ donors due to timing or health reasons, Health Minister Theresa Oswald said, adding it's hoped the new registry will increase the number of potential donors in that group.

Last year, Manitoba had one of the highest organ donation rates in Canada at 15.4 deceased donors per million people. In the last five years, Manitoba has seen a 67 per cent increase in organ donation. Last year, there were 53 kidney transplants in Manitoba.

There are about 160 Manitobans on transplant waiting lists.

Heart transplants are not done in Manitoba, but that could change if the number of viable heart donors increases.

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca

How to help

Sign a donor card and let your family know your wishes. Your donor card may not always be with you, and your family may not be ready to talk about it with a physician if they do not know your intentions.

Donor cards are the blue card available at any Autopac agent with your driver's licence, or for download on the Manitoba government's website and Transplant Manitoba's website, or sign the back of your Manitoba Health card.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 20, 2011 A8

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