title: Relationships Between Social Attitudes Toward Deceased Organ Donation and the Donation Rates in Poland, a Country With an Opting-out System.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Monitoring of attitudes toward deceased donation gives the general view of the acceptance of this treatment but does not allow for precise prediction of single person's behavior. Consistency of actions and attitudes has many determinants, personal and situational. The idea of this study was to assess and compare relationships between behaviors and attitudes toward postmortem organ donation in single districts and between larger regions of the country (west and east).
  
  
  METHODS
  Indicators calculated for the years 1996-2014 included the number of potential deceased donors (per million population [pmp]/y), the number of objections registered in the refusal registry (pmp), and the number and percentage of family refusals to donation. To assess relationships between variables, statistical and descriptive analyses were used.
  
  
  RESULTS
  There were 10,731 potential donor referrals: 10 times more in the most active than in the least active province. Potential donor referrals from the western region were almost twice as high (18.3 pmp/y) as from the east (10.1). In 1,045 cases (9.7%), organs were not used owing to objections of the relatives; this index differed in each province up to 7-fold, but was almost the same in western and eastern regions. Total number of objections listed in the Refusal Registry was 28,725 (748 pmp). This index was different in each district up to 4-fold, but was not distinctly different in west and east regions. No distinct correlation (Pearson test) was found among the 3 assessed variables.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Donation in Poland has much geographic differences. There is no common pattern of behavior and attitude toward donation and no correlation between these variables.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgical and Transplant Nursing, Medical University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland; Polish Transplant Coordinating Center (Poltransplant), Warsaw, Poland. Electronic address: jczerwinski@poltransplant.pl.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Czerwiński
authors.affiliation: Polish Transplant Coordinating Center (Poltransplant), Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Malanowski
authors.affiliation: Department of General and Transplantation Surgery, Medical University of Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kosieradzki
authors.affiliation: Department of General and Transplantation Surgery, Medical University of Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jonas
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Psychology, Children's Health Memorial Institute, Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Jakubowska-Winecka
mesh_terms: D001294:Attitude to Health / Q000208:ethnology*; D006801:Humans; D011044:Poland; D011639:Public Opinion; D045808:Refusal to Participate; D012042:Registries; D014019:Tissue Donors; D009927:Tissue and Organ Procurement / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*