Quebec sees significant increase in number of people waiting for organ transplant

For Brigitte St-Pierre, being away from her 10-year-old twins is the hardest part about waiting for a lung transplant.

St-Pierre, who suffers from pulmonary emphysema, has been on Quebec's transplant waiting list since December — a process that's forced her to leave her home in Baie-Comeau, about 420 kilometres northeast of Quebec City, and stay at a transitional home in Montreal to wait her turn. 

"I am very anxious, it stresses me out, leaving my home all alone, financing ... it takes a lot of organizing," said St-Pierre. 

According to Transplant Québec, which helps co-ordinate organ donations in the province, the number of Quebecers waiting for a transplant increased by 86 people last year, up by more than 10 per cent — the sharpest increase in the past 10 years.

Wait times for a heart transplant increased by 45 per cent in 2021, while wait times for livers and lungs improved, down 43 per cent and 60 percent, respectively. 

But overall, those wait times are expected to shoot up due to the strain on hospitals from COVID-19.

Dr. Prosanto Chaudhury, Transplant Québec's medical director of transplantation, says health-care workers have been focusing on the pandemic instead of on finding potential donors.

"Someone has to identify the potential organ donor, so someone who is brain dead or near brain death," he said.

"When the ICU teams are all caught up with COVID ... and the emergency rooms are overrun, it's difficult to think about potential organ donation."

Chaudhury says the province can help change that by making it mandatory to refer all potential organ donors to Transplant Québec, similar to Ontario and Nova Scotia's systems. 

Louis Beaulieu, executive director of Transplant Québec, says organ donors are extremely rare and that for each non-referred donor, up to eight lives could have been saved through transplantation.

Transplant Québec also suggests modernizing and simplifying the way Quebecers give consent to donating their organs by creating a registration website instead of the current process that requires registration by mail. 

Quebec's Health Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Chaudhury hopes action comes quickly so life-saving treatment doesn't come too late.

"Patients on dialysis do face an increased risk of dying while on dialysis as compared to getting their transplant, but that risk is something that happens over a couple of years," he said.

"So we're going to be seeing the consequences for our transplant patients, our transplant waiting list patients, for many years to come."