NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Despite an increase in donations, the number of lifesaving liver transplants is down in Tennessee, according to the Vanderbilt Transplant Center.
Dr. Seth Karp is the director of the center. Vanderbilt University Medical Center is the largest organ donor hospital in the country.
Karp says the reason for fewer organ transplants in some southern and Midwestern states is because of a policy change.
In 2020, the Acuity Circles Policy was created to allow a sick person up to 575 miles away from a donor hospital to receive a liver transplant. Before, each community could basically only use local donations.
"It's had a very deleterious effect on people in the southeast," Dr. Karp said.
When it was being debated, NewsChannel 5 talked about it with Dr. Karp.VUMC and 13 other liver transplant centers filed a lawsuit against the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the nonprofit organization that runs the transplant system, when it introduced the policy.
The policy is lopsided, according to Dr. Karp. It only benefits people in some states.
"In particular, groups in New York and groups in California said 'hey, there aren't enough organs for us here, and what they should have done, quite frankly, is they should have gone to their local organ procurement organizations — which are some of the worst in the United States — and said do better. Instead, what they did was they went to try to get the law changed to bring in organs from other parts of the United States," Dr. Karp said.
According to an investigation published this week by The Washington Post, organs are transported nearly twice as far under the new rules.
Since the rules for liver transplants changed, transplants in Tennessee dropped 4% percent meaning about 10 people a year aren't getting a transplant, according to the department of health and human services.
"We all should be trying to get as many organs as we can, not trying to basically change where in the United States people die," Dr. Karp said.
More than 100,000 Americans are waiting for a new organ. There are almost 3,000 people in Tennessee on a waitlist for an organ transplant. A new database is in development to help those waiting to get information about individual transplant centers, organ retrievals and wait lists.
