Quebec sees significant increase in number of people waiting for organ transplant

For Brigitte St-Pierre, being away from her 10-year-old twins is the hardest part about waiting for a lung transplant.

St-Pierre, who suffers from pulmonary emphysema, hasbeen on Quebec's transplant waiting list since December a process that's forced her to leave her home in Baie-Comeau, about 420 kilometres northeast of Quebec City, and stay at a transitional home in Montreal to wait her turn.

"I am very anxious, it stresses me out, leaving my home all alone, financing ... it takes a lot of organizing," said St-Pierre.

According to Transplant Qubec, which helps co-ordinate organ donations in the province, thenumber of Quebecers waiting for a transplant increased by 86 people last year, up by more than10 per cent the sharpest increase in the past 10 years.

Wait times for a heart transplant increased by 45 per cent in 2021,while wait times for livers and lungs improved, down 43 per cent and 60 percent, respectively.

But overall, those wait times are expected to shoot up due to the strain on hospitals fromCOVID-19.

Dr. Prosanto Chaudhury, Transplant Qubec's medical director of transplantation, sayshealth-care workers have been focusing on the pandemic instead of on finding potential donors.

"Someone has to identify the potential organ donor, so someone who is brain dead or near brain death," he said.

"When the ICU teams are all caught up with COVID ...and the emergency rooms are overrun, it's difficult to think about potential organ donation."

Chaudhury says the province can help change that by making it mandatory to referallpotential organ donors to Transplant Qubec, similar toOntarioand Nova Scotia's systems.

Louis Beaulieu, executive director of Transplant Qubec, says organ donors are extremely rare and that for each non-referred donor, up to eight lives could have been saved through transplantation.

Transplant Qubec also suggestsmodernizingand simplifying the way Quebecers give consent to donating their organs by creatinga registration website instead of the current process that requires registration by mail.

Quebec's Health Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment, butChaudhury hopes action comes quicklyso life-saving treatment doesn't come too late.

"Patients on dialysis do face anincreased risk of dying while on dialysis as compared to getting their transplant, but that risk is something that happens over a couple of years," he said.

"So we're going to be seeing the consequences for our transplant patients, our transplant waiting list patients, for many years to come."