title: Organ donation and transplantation in migrants: Piedmont reality from 2004 to 2011.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Over the last 20 years, an increasing number of people have immigrated into Italy. On January 1, 2011, there were 4,570,317 foreign residents in Italy, including 398,910 in the Piedmont region (Italian National Statistics Institute data). The Romanian community was the largest, followed by the Moroccan and Albanian ones. The numbers are even layer if we consider illegal immigrants. As a result, the number of foreign people with brain death has increased, as well as the number of foreign people needing organ transplantations.
  
  
  METHODS
  The Piedmont Regional Coordination Agency of Tissue and Organ Procurement has analyzed our 1781 brain death situations between January 2004 and December 2011, including 126 (7%) in people not born in Italy (migrants).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Non-refusal for donation occurred in 79 cases (62.7%). The agency also analyzed each community looking at number of brain deaths and non-refusals of donation. We utilized 61 donors, for 174 transplantations. Migrants in Italy are not only potential tissue and organ donors, but also potential tissue and organ recipients. Between 2004 and 2011, 222 patients who had not been born in Italy had been transplanted with: a liver (n = 66), a kidney (n = 130), a heart (n = 21) or a lung (n = 5).
authors.affiliation: Piedmont Regional Tissue and Organ Procurement Coordination Agency, Molinette Hospital, Turin, Italy. Electronic address: aguermani@molinette.piemonte.it.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Guermani
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Potenza
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Isnardi
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Peluso
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bosco
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Donadio
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D016377:Organ Transplantation; D009927:Tissue and Organ Procurement; D014171:Transients and Migrants