Rand 8500 people in Germany are on the waiting list for an organ – many hope and fear for the long-awaited call. However, the development of the number of transplants offers little reason to hope for an improvement in the situation: the German Foundation for Organ Transplantation (DSO) recently presented the first figures for 2022. At 869, organs were removed and transplanted from 64 fewer people than in the previous year. “The decrease in organ donations from last year is primarily due to the first quarter, in which we had many omicron cases,” says Axel Rahmel, Medical Director of the DSO – clinics were overloaded, staff was absent; for the remainder of the year, the numbers were roughly the same as last year.
Even if the severe congestion remains an exception, it is unlikely that the numbers will increase by themselves. In the last ten years they have generally been comparatively low – the scandal that became known in 2012 probably also played a role: transplant doctors had manipulated their patients’ information in order to increase their chance of an organ and being able to transplant it. According to surveys, the proportion of the population that is more positive about organ donation hardly changed in the years that followed – but fewer people were undecided about it, significantly more negatively. At that time, the number of transplants fell significantly. Another factor was probably that more people had living wills in which they refused the intensive care medicine required for organ donation.