Brain-dead Donation Rate in Month of Ramadan and the other Months: 2005-2014

Regardless of the level of development, religion and beliefs have crucial impact on people's attitude towards organ donation. Although organ donation in Islam is obviously appraised, mainly due to lack of an appropriate infrastructure, post-mortem donation rate in Islamic countries is not comparable to successful settings. We conducted this study to assess the extent of contribution of factors that reduce the level of effectiveness, and also to determine the impact of altruistic feelings in the month of Ramadan on family refusal as the leading modifiable contributor to organ donation rate. All records of potential and actual brain-dead donors, referred to Organ Procurement Unit of the Iranian Tissue Bank, from January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2014, were analyzed. In each year, the number of potential and actual donors in the month of Ramadan was compared to the mean value in the remaining 11 months. Of 1758 total potential donors in 10 years, 464 cases became actual donors (26.4% as overall level of effectiveness). The reasons for non-effectiveness were medical contraindications (25.4%), cardiac arrest before referral or during maintenance (7.4%), family refusal (30.8%), judicial refusal (8.7%), etc (1.3%). Analysis showed no significant differences between donation rates (both potential and actual) in Ramadan and non-Ramadan months for potential (Δ=3.55, 95% CI: -6.7 to 13.8) and actual donors (Δ=1.35, 95% CI: -2.3 to 5). Despite the undeniable role of religion and beliefs in the establishment of organ procurement program from brain-dead donors, there was no monthly variability in post-mortem organ donation rate.