In 2001, the ophthalmology community in Manitoba lobbied the regional health authority to allocate additional resources for cataract surgery because of unacceptably long waits. Approval was given in principle for a partial increase in resources and this was implemented in March 2002. Cataract surgery in the region is monitored by a waiting list program that is used to track and prioritize all p...

The length of time that patients spend on waiting lists is a topic of current concern. Calculating the proportion of patients who have been on a waiting list for a long time by taking a census of patients on the list at a single point in time will tend to yield a higher estimate than that obtained by calculating waiting times of patients admitted to hospital during a period of time. To illustra...

Several factors may highlight the relevance of prostate cancer to the pre-heart-transplant population. First, the expansion in candidate selection criteria led to increased number of men over the age of fifty to be considered for heart transplantation. With the introduction of left ventricular assist device (LVAD) therapy, waiting-list mortality has dramatically declined over the past decade. A...

An innovative approach to managing waiting lists and access to elective care, and one that is more fair and consistent with the 'guarantee of access' as stipulated in the Canada Health Act, has been developed by a partnership of medical associations, provincial ministries of health, regional health authorities and research centres. Operating as the Western Canada Waiting List Project, this grou...

The variability in deceased organ donation registries worldwide has received little attention. We considered all operating registries, where individual wishes about organ donation were recorded in a computerized database. We included registries which recorded an individual's decision to be a donor (donor registry), and registries which only recorded an individual's objection (non-donor registry...

BACKGROUND Transplantation is the treatment of choice for people with severe organ failure. However, demand substantially exceeds supply of suitable organs; consequently many people wait months, or years to receive an organ. Reasons for the chronic shortage of deceased organ donations are unclear; there appears to be no lack of 'in principle' public support for organ donation. METHODS/DESIGN ...

In 1996 the EUROTRANSPLANT organisation, which currently includes the member-states Austria, Belgium, Germany, Luxemburg, the Netherlands and Slovenia, changed its policy of renal donor organ allocation to the new algorithm ETKAS (Eurotransplant Kidney Allocation System). Its main goal was to shorten the average and maximum waiting time, adjust for rare HLA phenotypes and homozygosities, achiev...

OBJECTIVES To describe the relatives' experiences of information and support while heart or lung transplant candidates were waiting for a transplantation. METHODOLOGY/DESIGN The critical incident technique was used. Incidents were collected via interviews with 18 relatives (28-73 years old) of heart or lung transplant patients within four weeks of the patients being accepted onto the transpla...