Criteria for selecting organ donors and recipients

As there is a world-wide shortage of organs for transplantation, the selection of the patients is more defined by the availability of transplantable organs than by the medical condition of the potential recipient. This shortage of cadaveric organs is mainly responsible for the use of living donors. With HLA identical sibling donors the results are better than with cadaveric organs, but the ethical problems are usually underestimated. For the parent-to-child donation, the HLA compatibility is less than what could be achieved with well-matched cadaveric donors. The use of genetically unrelated donors is unacceptable from the ethical as well as from the medical point of view. The short- and long-term risk of donation has been insufficiently documented. The experience with the introduction of an opting-out legislation in Belgium in 1987 demonstrates that the shortage of cadaveric organs can be overcome. Harmonization of the legislation is, however, necessary so as to achieve comparable organ retrieval rates between countries participating in organ-exchange organisations.