Substantial increase in cadaveric organ donors in hospitals implementing the donor action program in Finland

The results of solid organ transplantation have improved during the last decade. Five-year patient survivals over 80% and graft survivals over 70% are common in many transplant centers. Also, quality-of-life assessments show that not only adults but even small children have a good quality of life after successful organ transplantation. Furthermore, transplantation programs have proved to be cost-effective. However, the organ shortage is a worldwide problem, which has in many countries led to prolonged waiting times, deaths on the waiting list, increased living related donations, acceptance of lower-quality organs, and in some instances even commercialization of the organ supply. Thus, it is extremely important to find strategies that increase the number of cadaveric organs for donation. In Finland organ transplantation is concentrated in one center with about 250 transplantations of different organs performed annually. The number of patients needing a new cadaveric organ is steadily increasing, but the number of donors has remained the same during the last decade. To improve cadaveric organ procurement the Donor Action (DA) program, which consists of a Hospital Attitude Survey and a medical records review performed by the donor hospital, has proved to increase the number of cadaveric donors. We introduced the DA program in Finland in 2000. Here in we report the results of this program in terms of its impact on the availability of cadaveric donors.