NOW/HSP Registries

In 2008, when Canadian Blood Services was asked to take on new responsibilities related to Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation, part of those duties were to develop three patient registries: the Living Donor Paired Exchange registry, which you can learn more about by going to Living Donation (LDPE), the National Organ Waitlist and the Highly Sensitized Patient registry.

Canadian Blood Services has worked with the Organ Transplantation community in the development of these registries, launching the Living Donor Paired Exchange in 2009. The other two registries are noted below.

National Organ Waitlist Registry

The National Organ Waitlist (NOW) registry includes all non-renal patients across Canada who have end-stage organ failure and are waiting for transplants. The NOW registry will be used for inter-provincial sharing of organs. The NOW registry successfully launched on June 26, 2012.

Highly Sensitized Patient Registry

The Highly Sensitized Patient (HSP) registry looks for potential deceased donor matches for patients in need of a kidney transplant who are hard to match because they have antibodies that will reject a kidney from a large portion of the donor population. Antibodies are proteins in our blood whose purpose is to destroy foreign materials like bacteria and a kidney from someone else. Three common events that can increase a person’s antibodies are pregnancies, blood transfusions and previous transplants.

The HSP Registry will provide tools to support offering of kidneys to matching highly sensitized patients and tracking of inter-provincial kidney sharing.

The HSP registry will launch in Spring 2013.