The increase in overdose deaths from the opioid crisis in the United States has led to a sharp rise in the number of organ donations from people who died from overdose. But the stigma surrounding those organs results in many going unused.
Dr. Christine Durand from Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore and her colleagues analysed all organ transplants in the US listed in the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients for the past 17 years. They found a “dramatic rise” in the number of donations from overdose-death donors. Such donors accounted for only 1.1% of donations in 2000, but that increased to 13.4% by 2017. “Now more than 1 in 8 deceased donors died from an overdose,” she said. Read more in CMAJ.