Emergency medicine, organ donation and the Human Tissue Act

Consent, communication, surgery, body donation, and the Human Tissue Act

Consent is always a topical issue. The General Medical Council (GMC) and the Medical Defence associations are always keen to see that patients are treated carefully and in line with good medical practice. Communication is an essential part of consent and if doctor-patient communication is good and is well documented in the notes, problems do not usually occur. Knowing what to communicate, howev...

Organ donation in the emergency department.

Organ and tissue donation and transplantation.

People requiring organ transplants are usually very ill or dying because their own organ is failing. They range from young babies and children through to older people. Some need transplants because they are born with a physical problem or a disease that causes organ failure. Others may have contracted a disease or acquired an injury. Organ transplants can save lives. People needing tissue trans...

Intensive care medicine and organ donation: exploring the last frontiers?

The main, universal problem for transplantation is organ scarcity. The gap between offer and demand grows wider every year and causes many patients in waiting list to die. In Spain, 90% of transplants are done with organs taken from patients deceased in brain death but this has a limited potential. In order to diminish organ shortage, alternative strategies such as donations from living donors,...

The Human Tissue Act (2004), anatomical examination and the importance of body donation in Northern Ireland

Following events at Alder Hey and the Bristol Royal Infirmary, in which it was revealed that there had been violations of the Human Tissue Act 1961, the UK government responded by initiating the so-called Kennedy and Redfern enquiries at the Bristol Royal Infirmary and Royal Liverpool Children’s Hospital and the Northern Ireland equivalent O’Hara Inquiry. All three enquiries found that the curr...