Callers to the monthly Health Care Hotline on Saturday included a woman who wanted to donate a kidney to anyone who needed one and a man who was told to go to an emergency room right away.
The topic for the monthly feature, which is sponsored by the Deseret News and the nonprofit Intermountain Health Care hospitals, was the kidneys. Both kidney disease and transplantations were questions for the experts, Dr. John B. Sorensen, surgeon and director of LDS Hospital's kidney transplant program and Joan Arata, the nursing manager of kidney, liver and pancreas transplants at the hospital.Altogether, 28 callers reached them, telephoning from sites as distant from each other as Roy and Panguitch, Ogden and Moroni, Sanpete County.
"One lady called in and wanted to know if she can be a living donor to someone who needed a kidney," Sorensen reported after the session ended at 1 p.m. The unusual aspect to her request was that she didn't know anyone in critical need of a new kidney; she just wanted to donate one to anyone who might need it.
Sorensen explained that such donations aren't accepted because of the potential for abuse later.
"We want to be sure there's no secondary gain and the donation's an altruistic gift to someone they (donors) have emotional ties with," he said.
The object is to avoid situations like those that are common in India, where organs apparently are purchased from desperately poor people and implanted in wealthier patients. Medical ethicists are trying to prevent that sort of market from developing here.
Sorensen said he knew of a woman who needed a kidney, and her sister in another state turned out to be a good tissue match. But before a donation could be made, transplant officials got a letter from the potential donor's boyfriend.
The man, who was a lawyer, wrote that the pain and trouble the woman would go through in giving up a kidney should be worth about $100,000 - an indication that this was the expected price of the kidney.
The sister was eliminated as a possible donor at that point, Sorensen said.
A related headache is that occasionally a strong parent will place undue pressure on a child to donate a kidney to a sibling who needs a transplant.
"We take great care to make sure there's not a coercion," he said. Potential donors are interviewed extensively about their motivations, and reasons are found to cross off the list those who were doing it under duress.
One man who called may have had symptoms of liver failure. Suffering from serious abdominal pain, the man had an appointment to see a doctor next Thursday.
He "hadn't been able to eat or sleep," the pain and other symptoms were so bad. Sorensen noted that he "told him to go to the emergency room" at a hospital, rather than wait for the appointment. The man said he would go.
According to Arata, one of the hurdles in finding enough kidneys for living transplantations is that many people don't know enough about donating.
"It's a relatively safe operation." Donors can live normal lives with just one kidney.
"Once you explain that to people, they're a little more willing to consider donating."
Those with questions may call the Intermountain Organ Recovery System, 521-1755 in the Salt Lake area and 1-800-833-6667 elsewhere in Utah.