PROFESSIONAL ISSUES

Organ donors sought from cardiac deaths

Adopting such a policy will save and enhance lives, transplant officials say.

By Andis Robeznieks, AMNews staff. Aug. 9, 2004.

There is a way to increase organ donations possibly by up to 20%, but it involves a protocol that is not universally practiced.

Now, with 17 people dying daily in the United States waiting for an organ, health officials are pushing hospitals and organ procurement organizations to pursue more donations after cardiac death (DCDs).

DCDs involve donors who have brain injuries but are not considered "brain dead," cannot maintain circulatory or respiratory function and die once life support is withdrawn. Thirty-five of the country's 59 organ procurement organizations have DCD protocols, but 11 of these OPOs had only one or two DCD donors in 2003.

In June, St. Paul-based LifeSource, the organ procurement organization responsible for Minnesota and North and South Dakota, became the latest OPO to adopt DCD policies, and it's expecting this to translate into a 10% to 15% increase in donor rates.

"In the coming years, we'll see most -- if not all -- OPOs adopting these practices," said Gift of Life spokeswoman Susan Mau Larson. "Lives are saved or enhanced by such donations, and donor families find it as something positive coming out of a tragedy. So it helps that way, too."

The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Organ Transplantation issued a call for hospitals and OPOs to maximize DCDs in November 2002.

Kim Johnson, professional services coordinator for United Network for Organ Sharing, said UNOS reaffirmed its stance that DCDs were "ethically permissible" in November 2000. She said the UNOS Ethics Committee will review the current science involving DCD at its September meeting.

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