Make Your Voice Heard About Allocation for Kidney Transplant

Make Your Voice Heard About Allocation for Kidney Transplant
from the National Kidney Foundation

Should the oldest person be bumped to the top of the kidney transplant waiting list? The sickest? The youngest? When there aren't enough organs to go around, it's a formidable challenge for doctors and policymakers to balance the need to be fair and efficient when deciding how to allocate donated kidneys.

To improve the national policy for allocation of deceased donor kidneys, the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network/United Network for Organ Sharing (OPTN/UNOS) is examining and modeling various methods and the National Kidney Foundation has been reviewing the OPTN/UNOS's recent deliberations on the issue.

If you have something to say on the subject, the time to speak up is now. As part of this ongoing process, the OPTN/UNOS Committee is soliciting public input for ideas and commentary that could inform a future policy proposal.

While OPTN/UNOS has already revised allocation policy for liver and lung transplantation, kidney transplantation presents different issues. Most significant, "people waiting for a kidney transplant have the alternative life-sustaining therapy with dialysis, unlike liver and lung transplant candidates," says Bryan Becker, MD, National Kidney Foundation (NKF) President-elect and chairman of the NKF's committee to review kidney allocation policy and develop a position on the revision of the OPTN/UNOS policy.

You can let the policymakers know what you think by responding to a series of questions on the following concepts through a request for information:

Life Years from Transplant (LYFT) -- a new measure developed by OPTN/UNOS to determine how long a transplant recipient is likely to live after a successful kidney transplantation

Donor Profile Index (DPI) -- a new measure developed by OPTN/UNOS to determine how long a deceased donor transplant is likely to function based on characteristics of the donor

Dialysis Time (DT)--a measure of how long a patient has been on dialysis

UNOS/OPTN is looking to the kidney community to contribute to the discussion related to how all of these measures could affect the present and future state of kidney transplantation in the U.S. to improve organ allocation. The NKF's committee to review allocation policy will provide its summary assessment to UNOS/OPTN in the near future and encourages you to give your input to the UNOS committee by the upcoming deadline of December 15, 2008 by clicking here http://www.optn.org/news/newsDetail.asp?id=1151 - or directly download info here http://www.optn.org/SharedContentDocuments/KidneyAllocationSystem--RequestForInformation.pdf - after reviewing this information you can respond:

How to Submit a Response
Responses will be accepted until December 18, 2008. They may be submitted electronically by e-mail to
kidneypolicy@unos.org. Attachments are permitted in the following formats: .pdf, .doc, .txt.
Please note, e-mail addresses will not be shared with reviewers, only information contained in the
subject line and body of the e-mail will be shared. If you do not wish to be identified by your response,
do not include identifying information in the e-mail subject line, body or attachments.
For those without internet access, responses may be faxed to 804-782-7896 (attention: Kidney RFI
Coordinator), or mailed to:
Attention: Kidney RFI Coordinator
United Network for Organ Sharing
700 N 4th Street
Richmond, VA 23219

The collected information may appear in reports. Although UNOS will try to protect against the release
of identifying information, there can be no guarantee of confidentiality.
A summary of the results obtained from the responses to this RFI will be available to the public on the
following websites: www.unos.org and www.optn.org.

Responses will be incorporated into additional public discussion, including a public forum tentatively scheduled for January 26, 2009. A summary of responses to the RFI will also be posted to the OPTN and UNOS Web sites.