Expanded donor criteria due to age: an effort rewarded

The life expectancy of the current Spanish population is 78 years, with some 20% of the population aged over 65 years. The continuing increase in the demand for transplants has led to widening of the criteria for acceptance of donors without worsening the results, but without reducing transplant waiting lists or mortality. This has resulted in the need to include the concept of the expanded criteria donor (ECD). We undertook a retrospective study of 77 donors from a hospital with no neurosurgery service from January 2000 to December 2005. Four of the donors younger than 60 years of age (n = 38) were not appropriate (10.5%), whereas five of the donors older than 60 years of age (n = 39) were not appropriate (12.8%; P = NS). The older donors provided 47 used kidneys (60.2%) and 22 livers (56.4%), slightly fewer than those obtained from the younger donors, though the difference was not significant. Thus, ECDs, those older than 60 years of age, did not result in a significant loss of kidneys or livers available for transplantation. Other factors associated with systemic vascular disease and accompanying disorders could be determinant when predicting the usefulness of organs for transplantation.