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UNOS & NMDP Links

United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS)

The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) coordinates the nation's organ transplant system, providing vital services to meet the needs of men, women and children awaiting life-saving organ transplants.  Based in Richmond, Virginia, UNOS is a private, nonprofit membership organization.  UNOS members encompass every transplant hospital, tissue matching laboratory and organ procurement organization in the United States, as well as voluntary health and professional societies, ethicists, transplant patients and organ donor advocates.

How does the organ waiting list work?  Under contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Health Services & Resources Administration (HRSA), the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) maintains a centralized computer network linking all organ procurement organizations and transplant centers.  This computer network is accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with organ placement specialists in the UNOS Organ Center always available to answer questions.  After being referred by a doctor, a transplant center evaluates the patient.  The transplant center runs a number of tests and considers the patient's mental and physical health, as well as his or her social support system.  If the center determines that the patient is a transplant candidate, they will add the patient's medical profile to the national patient waiting list for organ transplant.  The patient is not placed on a ranked list at that time.  Rather, the patient's name is added to the "pool" of patients waiting.

When a deceased organ donor is identified, a transplant coordinator from an organ procurement organization accesses the UNOS patient database.  Each patient in the "pool" is matched by the computer against the donor characteristics.  The computer then generates a ranked list of patients for each organ that is procured from that donor in ranked order according to organ allocation policies.  Factors affecting ranking may include tissue match, blood type, length of time on the waiting list, immune status and the distance between the potential recipient and the donor. For heart, liver, and intestines, the potential recipient's degree of medical urgency is also considered.  Therefore, the computer generates a differently ranked list of patients for each donor organ matched.

The organ is offered to the transplant team of the first person on the list.  Often, the top patient will not get the organ for one of several reasons.  When a patient is selected, he or she must be available, healthy enough to undergo major surgery, and willing to be transplanted immediately.  Also, a laboratory test to measure compatibility between the donor and recipient may be necessary.  For example, patients with high antibody levels often prove incompatible to the donor organ and cannot receive the organ because the patient's immune system would reject it.  Once a patient is selected and contacted and all testing is complete, surgery is scheduled and the transplant takes place.

For more information about UNOS, click on www.unos.org.

National Marrow Donor Program

The National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating an opportunity for all patients to receive the bone marrow or umbilical cord blood transplant they need, when they need it.  Every year, thousands of men, women and children get life-threatening diseases like leukemia and lymphoma.  Many of them will die unless they get a bone marrow or cord blood transplant from a genetically matched donor.  Some people find a match in their family, but 70% do not. These patients depend on the NMDP to help them find an unrelated donor or cord blood unit.

NMDP began connecting patients with unrelated donors in 1987 with a registry of just 10,000 volunteers.  Today, NMDP’s Registry has grown to 7 million donors and 70,000 cord blood units.  It is the largest and most racially and ethnically diverse Registry of its kind in the world.  Medical advances are making marrow and cord blood transplants available to more patients all the time.  Since 1987, NMDP has arranged for more than 30,000 transplants to give patients a second chance at life. Currently, NMDP facilitates almost 4,000 transplants a year.

As the nation’s Cord Blood Coordinating Center, the NMDP is committed to helping patients through its network of public cord blood banks and expectant mothers who choose to donate umbilical cord blood for anyone’s benefit.  The Related Donor Cord Blood Program helps eligible families benefit from related donation. The NMDP facilitates unrelated marrow and cord blood transplants as a single point of access for a long-standing collaborative network of national and international leading medical facilities in marrow and cord blood transplantation.  The NMDP connects patients, doctors, donors and researchers to the resources they need to help more people live longer and healthier lives. For more information about NMDP, click on www.marrow.org.