Organ Procurement from Deceased Donors and its Impact on Organ Transplantation in Iran during the First Ten Years of Cadaveric Transplantation

The Act of transplantation from deceased and dead-brain donors was ratified in the parliament in 2000. In the subsequent two years, few number of organs were procured from dead-brain patients and transplanted. Later on, a national network was established for organ procurement; units for recognizing brain death were established in Tehran and some other cities to provide the necessary infrastructure for organ transplantation from deceased and dead-brain donors. In this report, we described the outcome of organ procurement from deceased and dead-brain donors after 10 years of its establishment in Iran. To do so, we collected data from some relevant published articles and also reports of the Ministry of Health released between 2001 and 2010. By the year 2010, 3673 organs were harvested from deceased donors and transplanted. The rate of liver transplantation has increased rapidly from 16 cases in 2001 to 280 cases in 2010-almost 18 times. There were 554 cadaveric kidney transplantation in 2010; it comprised 19% of total kidney transplantations that is almost 8 times that in 2001. Over the study period, organ procurement has increased by 6-fold. The rate of organ procurement from deceased and dead-brain donors has increased dramatically over the studied period. Considering the existing potentials for this scheme of organ procurement, it seems that improving the Iranian Network for Transplant Organ Procurement will lead to better results.