By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

Inspired by the use of Facebook to help people find lost treasures from their homes blown away by tornados, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his medical school girlfriend wondered whether the social media site could be used to help eliminate the shortage of organs for patients in need of transplants.

On Tuesday, Zuckerberg announced on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that Facebook users would be able to update their status to announce that they were willing to donate their organs.

“By having this simple tool, we think that people can really help spread awareness of organ donation and that they want to participate in this to their friends,” Zuckerberg told ABC’s Robin Roberts. “And that can be a big part of helping solve the crisis that’s out there.”

Facebook users who have already promised to donate their organs after they die -- usually when they get their driver’s license -- can update their status as organ donors on their timeline and, hopefully, inspire friends to do the same.

If Facebook users haven’t already registered to be potential donors, they’ll be directed when changing their status to organ donor to a donor website in their region where they can register online.

After the show aired, about 300 individuals registered to be organ donors on the New England site in the past few hours, whereas the site normally gets about 50 new people registering on a given day.

“We’re really excited about it,” said Laura Dempsey, spokesperson for the New England Organ Bank. “It can really help increase awareness and the number of people who are registered to be organ donors. Over 4,700 people in New England are currently waiting for organ transplants.” More than 2.5 million Massachusetts residents are registered to be organ donors.

While the Facebook initiative will, no doubt, help increase the donor pool, some experts contend that the biggest impact on the organ shortage could occur from people stepping up to volunteer to be living organ donors -- providing a spare kidney or portion of their liver to someone in need. (That’s, of course, a lot tougher than giving away your organs in the event of an unexpected and premature death.)

“Living donation represents the largest potential for increasing the donor pool,” wrote Dr. Dorry Segev, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in a paper published Tuesday in Nature Reviews Nephrology. “In the past 20 years, living donor kidney transplantation has tripled, from approximately 2,000 in 1990 to well over 6,000 in 2004. Growth of living donation has been minimal since then.”

The paper outlines some important advances that could help make it easier for those willing to donate a spare kidney to someone in need. If a close friend or family member can’t find a match, you can donate your kidney to a a stranger who’s a match, which moves your loved one to the top of the list. In the U.S., 550 of these transplants were performed in 2010 compared to just three in 2000.

Also the surgery to remove the donor organ has become far less invasive using smaller incisions and laparascopic techniques that have shorter recovery times.

Deborah Kotz can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Follow her on Twitter @debkotz2.

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