KCTV 5New proposal could change who gets donated organs first

When KCTV5's Dana Wright first introduced viewers to a 77-year-old Overland Park man, his kidneys were failing and he was in desperate need of a transplant. Recently, the life-saving call finally came but that hasn't eased the concern of the retiree for other older Americans still on the waiting list.

Melvin Bareiss, 77, said he and his wife have a lot of living to do now that he's been given the ultimate gift of a kidney but he's concerned other older Americans might not have the same chance at getting a donor organ in their twilight years. His fear comes from a proposed rule change which would match donor kidneys and recipients, in part, by age.

"I feel fantastic," Bareiss said.

Bareiss is back home in Overland Park after the recent surgery which gave him a new lease on life. Doctors transplanted a donor kidney below his right hip bone, putting an end to weekly dialysis treatments Bareiss endured three days a week, four hours a day, for an entire year.

"That was the thing that really weighed on me. You just don't feel like doing anything after being on dialysis for a week," he said.

Bareiss' gift came after a local woman, who wanted to be a donor, died suddenly. He said it's tough knowing someone else had to lose so much so he could be here. He said he knows he's fortunate to leave his days of dialysis behind.

Right now, about 1,600 patients in Kansas and Missouri need a kidney yet only 200 become available every year. While currently the nation's organ donation system gives preference to patients, like Bareiss, who have been waiting the longest, things may be changing. Under a new proposal, the United Network for Organ Sharing would instead start matching kidneys, in part, based on age with younger donor kidneys going to younger patients and older donor kidneys going to older patients.

"I think the essence is what this policy change is really trying to get at. Can we match kidneys with their useful life expectancy with patients with a similar life expectancy and therefore get the biggest bang for the buck?" said Rob Linderer, the Midwest Transplant Network CEO.

Linderer explained it like this: the rule change would ensure each donated kidney has the chance to last as long as possible. A 20-year-old patient will get many more decades of use out of a 20-something donor kidney. Put that same young kidney into an elderly patient like Bareiss and the patient won't likely life long enough to get full use out of the organ.

The proposal is controversial since the healthiest donor organs, those from donors under the age of 35, would most often go to younger patients on the list.

Bareiss said, for older Americans, it's one more hurdle to cross in an already complicated system.

Bareiss wants to be an organ donor too. It's right there on his driver's license. He said, when it's his time to go, he hopes he can pass on the gift of life just like someone else did for him. He and his wife Diane have been married 55 years and said there aren't enough words to thank their donor family for the gift of more time.

"There can't be something more than to thank how wonderful it was, that they were able to do that and give him the opportunity to do better - to keep going with his life," said Diane.

The new rules aren't likely to go into effect until 2013 at the earliest. Both sides agree there wouldn't be a problem if more Americans agreed to donate their organs upon their death.

For a link to the United Network for Organ Sharing, click here. 

For more information on the two concepts for kidney allocation, click here.

Click on the following two links for Donate Life Kansas and Donate Life Missouri. 

For KCTV5 Investigation's previous story on Melvin Bareiss, click here. 

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