Taking values seriously: Ethical challenges in organ donation and transplantation for critical care professionals

Last year, >28,000 people received organ transplants from >14,000 donors in the United States. Unfortunately, the wait list now tops 91,000, with the gap between recipient needs and available donor organs at around 60,000. This has motivated a host of efforts to increase organ supply, including driver's license and donor registry initiatives, educational and advertising campaigns, and "required request" and mandatory Organ Procurement Organization notification when a patient's death is imminent. Other more controversial efforts to increase the donor pool include expanded criteria for cadaveric donors, such as older or sicker donors and so-called non-heart-beating donation, now referred to as donation after cardiac death. Perhaps the most controversial of all efforts to address the organ shortage have focused on increasing the number of living organ donors, which in 2001 for the first time exceeded the number of cadaveric donors. Critical care professionals know the sad reality behind the statistical scarcity of organ supply. They must manage anxious patients and family members who may be waiting for an organ that never comes, triage patients into and out of the intensive care unit, and work through the propriety of shifting goals from cure to comfort when those same patients deteriorate to the point that transplant may no longer be an appropriate medical option or when a transplant fails. Equally significant ethical challenges arise on the donor side, whether it is working through difficult end-of-life decisions, identifying when to call the organ procurement organization, caring for brain-dead patients, managing a candidate for donation after cardiac death, or caring for a living donor postoperatively. This article discusses some of the difficult ethical challenges raised by organ donation and transplantation for critical care professionals, focusing on end-of-life decision making, donation after cardiac death, and living organ donation.