dr. john tore ess breaks it down for us. reporter: miles king never wanted to move away from new york city. his home and a place he loves. i can t imagine another place i would want to leave. he was desperately and seriously ill from a rare autoimmune disease needed a liver transplant. more than 13,000 patients are on the waiting list for a liver, a third living in new york, california, and texas. his doctors told him to find a state with a shorter wait list. so he moved to north carolina. where he ultimately received a transplant. you are going to go to where you think your life can be saved. you re kind of in survival mode. for three decades, organs have been distributed locally, limited to specific area, but some experts say that roej nal system is out of date. when the old system was designed, there were fewer people waiting and fewer transplant centers and fewer transplant patients and the plans among the different parts of the country wasn t as critical of an issue.
regularly. it would mine the heart is rejecting and they ll want to change your medication. you get the transplant and that s the start but for the rest of your life you ll have to be under doctors orders, doctors control. if you don t do that there s a strong chance the heart transplant if fail. there were 3400 people on the list and only 2,000 transplants took place. 331 people died waiting for heart. the demand is much greater than the supply. do you think the fact that hearts are so hard to dom by that this could play a fact in the role that the teenager isn t being put on the list. hearts are the toughest organ to get. we have two kidneys when we die. they are very tough to dpet. transplant centers do pay
whether we thought he has what it takes to do the job. he passed an nypd test in 97 but lax the military background or college credit to qualify for the force. an update to sara and javier s site for a new lung. they allow transplant centers to request or a case by case basis priority status for children under the age of 12 so they can vie for lungs based on donors with special needs. the rule is only effective until july 2014. thank you ainsley. now to an extreme weather alert twisters spotted on the east coast. look at this one near baltimore maryland. meantime the storm system damaging dozens of homes leaving tens of thousands in the dark in delaware. stephanie esposito is live for us in delaware. stephanie? good morning, heather. the national weather service
desperately fighting for now. they want kathleen sebelius to change the rule with regards to age. what are your thoughts on that? well i understand that s what they re requesting. i don t know about the feasibility of that. martha: yeah. i think, i think the family has done everything they can. they should be, in my opinion, they should be seeking out other transplant centers. you are allowed to list at two different centers, outside of the range of the primary center. martha: good to know. pardon me? martha: i said, that s good to know. right. is my understanding that as well she can be listed as an adult in some of these centers. the, i think the issue then again is, where she comes up on the list. martha: all right. jeff goldstein, thank you so much for sharing your perso- and your thoughts on this case. good to speak with you, sir. take care. my pleasure. thank you. best to the family. bill: cute little girl and our best to the family as well. thank you, sir. she knew h
getting a lung donation to be able to get that transplant? well, right now our greatest hope is pediatric lungs still because, you know, both where we are with the adult lungs. we are appealing and pushing the regional hospitals and regional transplant centers who have all received us really kindly to let sarah compete on her l.a.s. score. and our understanding is that while it can t be changed in the computer system, these transplant centers could decide on an individual basis to let sarah compete on how sick she is. and our hope and our prayer is that they will hear our plea, they will see sarah and realize this is the way medicine should be managed. the sickest patient should be cared for first. so that s our push. beyond that we have a petition on change.org. i think we may have unfortunately just lost fran and janet there. we ll try to get them back. luckily we were able to get through most of the interview