SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (Good Things Utah) – Each April, the United States recognizes National Donate Life Month, bringing attention to organ, eye, bone marrow, and tissue donation and transplantation.

Donate Life Month honors and recognizes those who have saved lives through the gift of organ donation. Only the generosity of donor families and donors makes saving lives through organ transplantation possible.

Donate Life Month is an excellent time to share with your family your decision to be a donor, check the organ donor box when you renew your driver’s license, and consider the healing gift of sharing a living organ through the gift of transplantation.

Across the country, 104,000 people are currently on the transplant list, waiting for a kidney, liver, pancreas, heart or lungs. Every nine minutes, another person is added to the waitlist.

In Utah, 900 people are on that waiting list.

Intermountain Health is a premier organ transplant provider in the Intermountain West, providing heart, kidney, liver, pancreas, and bone marrow transplants to people in need across the region.

The Intermountain Health Transplant program, based at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, transplanted 414 organs in 2023 – 182 liver, 198 kidney, 30 heart, and 4 kidney/pancreas.

This is the fifth consecutive year that the Intermountain Health Transplant Program has performed a record-breaking number of adult transplants, and 2024 is appearing to head for a sixth record-breaking year.

The most significant increase in 2023 was in the liver transplant program, which grew from 104 transplants in 2022 to 182 in 2023 – and is now ranked ninth in the United States among 142 other transplant programs and does this by having the shortest wait times for organs in the nation.

Friends for Life

Erika Morton, 35, Lehi, received a diagnosis of Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC) in 2018, which is a chronic liver disease that leaves the liver inflamed and scared and the bile ducts blocked.

Doctors told Morton she would eventually need a living liver transplant. Many of her family members offered to donate, but they weren’t a match. But last fall, she received a call from the Intermountain transplant team saying that a Good Samaritan donor was a perfect match.

That Good Samaritan was Shaylin Crandall, 32, Springville, who said she read about living donors in an Intermountain Health work email. She almost immediately signed up and got called the following week.

But when Crandall got COVID, the transplant was delayed a week. When she posted her news on social media, a mutual friend put two and two together and connected the two patients. Crandall and Morton became instant close friends, texting and calling each other. Their first in-person meeting was proper before their surgeries on November 1, 2023.

“I was relieved to find out where my liver was going,” said Crandall. “We immediately clicked, and it was great to go through this together.”

The two continue to support one another on their individual roads of healing. Crandall says she is also looking into donating one of her kidneys.

Intermountain’s liver transplant program has also consistently had better-than-expected post-transplant survival for over 10 years and has proven itself to be an innovator in liver transplantation.

Intermountain has performed liver transplants in situations where other programs might not, for instance, transplantation for cholangiocarcinoma, neuroendocrine tumors, and, more recently, select cases of colorectal cancer.

About 8,000 liver transplants are done annually in the U. S. Since 1986, Intermountain has averaged nearly 200 liver transplants per year with a 93% survival rate for the first year.

“We are health partners, collaborating to keep people well,” said Randi Ryan, MD, a transplant surgeon at Intermountain Medical Center. “We say, ‘Yes’ more often where other programs have said, ‘No,” this allows us to get our patients back to their families living their best possible lives.”

Intermountain performs living kidney and liver donor transplants to patients, helping reduce the time they spend waiting for an organ.

Living Donation

Living donations save thousands of lives each year. Living donors will donate a portion of their liver, which will then grow back, or one of their kidneys.

Since the body can perform with just one kidney, it is the most transplanted organ from a living donor. It’s also the best option for people who need a new kidney; it’s safe, and donors don’t have to be related to the recipient.

Five critical benefits of participating in a living donor transplant include:

1. Every living donor transplant that occurs removes one person from the transplant waiting list and ensures that the next person on the list won’t have to wait as long for a deceased donor transplant.

2. Living donor kidneys tend to have greater longevity than those transplanted from a deceased donor

3. Surgery can be scheduled in advanced

4. Patients can get a living donor kidney transplant before starting dialysis

5. Patients spending less time on dialysis means better health

“On average, a living kidney transplant doubles the recipient’s life expectancy,” said Donald Morris, MD, nephrologist and Intermountain Health’s kidney transplant medical director. “It also greatly improves the quality of life while decreasing overall health costs.”

National Kidney Registry

Intermountain’s Transplant Services at Intermountain Medical Center participates in a national registry that helps get the best optimally matched organ donors and recipients nationwide.

The National Kidney Registry (NKR) is a unique nationwide organ donor exchange program that facilitates paired exchanges, a process in which an organ donor donates their kidney to a recipient other than their loved one in exchange for a compatible kidney for their friend or loved one.

Donate a Kidney or a Liver – Save a Live

To sign up to become a living donor, go to www.IntermountainHealthcare.org/DonateLife.

Don’t forget to share your decision to share the gift of life with your family. And don’t forget to check the organ donation box when you renew your license or go to the Yes Utah! website to register today.

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