Assessment of Brain-Dead Potential Organ Donors

Introduction: We quantified the potential for organ donation and identified missed opportunities for organ donation in a single institute. Materials and methods: Data of potential organ donors and the outcome of requests fororgan donation in the intensive care unit (ICU) of Ajou University Hospital between January 2013 and July 2015 were collected and reviewed. Results: Of 1338 deaths that occurred within 2.5 years in our ICU, there were 189 (14.1%) brain-dead patients, with 150 medically suitable potential organ donors(11.2%). 116 requests (request rate of 77.3%) for organ donation resulted in 50consents (consent rate of 33.3%) and 41 transplantations (transplantation rate of 27.3%, 3.1% of total ICU deaths). In 8 cases out of 49 eligible donors, donation failed, because of circulatory death (1 case), proven prostate cancer (2 cases), no request from recipient (1 case), poor quality of organs assessed on the operation table (2 cases), hidden active tuberculosis (1 case) and hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (1 case). Conclusion: An increase in the organ donation rate may be possible through increasing the number of consents, and through optimizing the identification procedures of potential donors.