Non heart-beating donors in England.
When transplantation started all organs were retrieved from patients immediately after cardio-respiratory arrest, i.e. from non heart-beating donors. After the recognition that death resulted from irreversible damage to the brainstem, organ retrieval rapidly switched to patients certified dead after brainstem testing. These heart-beating-donors have become the principal source of organs for transplantation for the last 30 years. The number of heart-beating-donors are declining and this is likely to continue, therefore cadaveric organs from non-heart-beating donor offers a large potential of resources for organ transplantation. The aim of this study is to examine clinical outcomes of non-heart-beating donors in the past 10 years in the UK as an way of decreasing pressure in the huge waiting list for organs transplantation.
Chaib
Eleazar
E
Nuffield Department of Surgery, John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford, Oxford, England. eleazarchaib@yahoo.co.uk
D002102:Cadaver; D004739:England; D006323:Heart Arrest; D006801:Humans; D016030:Kidney Transplantation; D014019:Tissue Donors; D020858:Tissue and Organ Harvesting / Q000379:methods*; D009927:Tissue and Organ Procurement