CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) – UVA Health Transplant Center’s new ‘Living Donor First’ program works to send an early and frequent message about the benefits of living organ donation.
“What we do here is beyond remarkable,” said Anita Sites, nurse practitioner and manager of the Living Donor Program and Pediatric Program at UVA Transplant Center. “It is life-changing, it is life-saving — not only for the patient, but for their family members.”
Sites said the newly launched initiative is a way to save more lives and connect patients with life-changing kidney and liver transplants.
“It’s going to bring more and more awareness to living donation,” Sites said. “No matter how many times we have the conversation, it’s not enough.”
Sites said patients can spend eight to 10 years waiting for an organ. By helping patients understand the process and the possibility of living donations, she says, they can cut that time and improve health outcomes in the long run.
“It allows us to give them treatment before they’re the sickest person or have been waiting on a list for a really long time,” said Dr. Shawn Pelletier, service-line director of transplant and division chief of transplant surgery at UVA Health.
Pelletier says living donation is almost always the best option for transplant patients, giving them a healthy organ with fewer complications and longer function.
“It’s a really difficult question to say ‘Hey, will you give me one of your kidneys? Will you give me part of your liver?’” Pelletier said. “So, helping them understand how to start those conversations.”
Those conversations, Pelletier said, can go a long way in changing someone’s life.
“It’s one of the most rewarding parts of my job to come out after a living donor procedure, whether I’m on the donor side or the recipient side,” Pelletier said. “Usually, the friends and family are all together — it’s a celebration of the two events, even though it’s a scary time to have two of your family members having surgery at the exact same time. Just the sense of gratification and success for that setting is really, really rewarding.”
For more information on UVA Health’s Living Donor First program, click here.
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