OneLegacy, the not-for-profit organ, eye and tissue recovery organization serving the greater Los Angeles, Southern California area, announced today that 2019 marked the fifth consecutive year of record-breaking increases in lifesaving and healing organ, eye and tissue donation. In the year just concluded, OneLegacy enabled the transplant of 1,619 organs from 557 donors, an increase of 8% over 2018. In addition, the organization reported a 4% increase in tissue donors to 3,007, helping over 225,000 individuals, while sight-saving corneas transplanted increased a remarkable 25% from the prior year to 1,616.

“The growth in donation is being driven here and across the country by improved donor registration and family authorization rates, plus significant increases in the recovery of organs for transplant from donors after circulatory death (DCD),” says OneLegacy CEO Tom Mone. “DCD donation provides the opportunity for individuals and families to give the gift of life in those cases where treating physicians and family members recognize that there is no hope for recovery and choose to discontinue mechanical ventilation, rather than to prolong futile care.” To his point, Mone points out that while DCD donation constituted just 12% of donors 10 years ago, today it makes up 25-35% of donors nationwide.

According to Mone, the greater Los Angeles area had been challenged to increase DCD donation until the year just concluded, when hospitals, physicians and families collaborated with OneLegacy to fulfill individuals’ donor registration in DCD cases. Since this collaboration began, “We have seen a 70% increase in DCD donation, which has saved some 250 additional lives through donation and transplantation,” says Mone.

These increases enabled by OneLegacy and its communities are part of a nationwide increase in organ donors that projects to be as much as a 10% increase over 2018’s all-time high. The result is that the United States now has a world-leading deceased organ donor transplant rate of 109 per million population. And when living donors are included, the U.S. also leads the world at 121 transplants per million population. “Organ donation performance in 2019 shows the U.S. donation and transplantation system to be the international leader in caring for its population suffering from organ failure,” according to Mone.

Since 2000, U.S. organ donation has doubled to enable nearly 40,000 organs to be transplanted per year—this coming over a period in which donor potential as measured by total deaths is up only 1%. These numbers are a testament to those who say “yes” to donation and the recovery organizations that make donation possible. Unfortunately, over recent years kidney failure has risen 61% and now affects more than 660,000 people, while liver failure has risen 15% and now affects 4.5 million Americans causing 42,000 deaths per year.

“These numbers tell us that the need for transplants is growing far faster than potential donors,” says Mone. “That drives us to help every Southern Californian to choose to register to be an organ donor at the DMV and at donatelifecalifornia.org and to explore the option to be a living donor for a friend or family member.”

OneLegacy is a nonprofit organization dedicated to saving and healing lives through organ, eye and tissue donation in seven counties in Southern California: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and Kern. Serving more than 200 hospitals, 11 transplant centers and a diverse population of over 20 million, OneLegacy is the largest organ, eye and tissue recovery organization in the world, For more information, visit onelegacy.org, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.