NHS faces shortage of organ donors

London: Transplant patients are being given the lungs of heavy smokers because the NHS is so short of organ donations.

Surgeons are also being forced to use diseased body parts from cancer sufferers, drug addicts and the very elderly.

Experts say the waiting list has now grown so long that hospitals are increasingly resorting to using ‘high risk' organs.

There are around 8,000 patients needing an organ at any one time and every day three people die because they do not get one in time.

As a result, doctors say most patients would probably accept a ‘high risk' or ‘marginal' organ as without it they may not survive the year.

Hospitals are also using tissue from those more at risk of carrying HIV and hepatitis C, such as gay men and drug users. These groups are not allowed to give blood but they can donate organs, simply because there is such a shortage.

Last year a young woman died just five months after being given the lungs of a 30-a-day smoker.

Lyndsey Scott, 28, a cystic fibrosis sufferer, developed severe pneumonia shortly after the transplant.

She had not been informed that the organs would be coming from a smoker, and her family claimed that she would have refused to go ahead with the operation had she known.

Professor James Neuberger, of NHS Blood and Transplant, the Government agency responsible for organ donations, said: "In an ideal world you would rather have lungs from 20-year-old healthy people who have never smoked, but that isn't a luxury we have.

"You have to say, do you get a lung with more risk or do you get no lung? That sounds crude and brutal but it is the reality."

Last week doctors warned that the quality of organs was decreasing because growing numbers of donors are either obese or elderly.

Up to a quarter of donors are very overweight compared to a seventh ten years ago. Those who are obese are more likely to have damaged hearts because of disease, as well as fatty livers and pancreases.

The number of donors over 70 has also quadrupled in the past decade.

Although some patients are specifically asked whether they are happy to take a ‘high risk' organ, the decision is often left to the doctor.

The NHS is now drawing up guidelines which are expected to require hospital staff to check with patients whether they will accept potentially damaged organs.

Dr Alexander Gimson, a liver specialist at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, who is advising on the guidance, said: "We say to people, look, all organs have a risk, some high risk, some low risk, please trust us, we will give you the one that is best for you."