Technical complications in organ procurement

It is of crucial importance that harvested organs are not discarded because of lesions inflicted during the procurement operation. From January 2005 to January 2006, a total of 395 organs were procured: 266 kidneys, 102 livers, and 27 pancreas. Two kidneys were lost due to vascular lesions, and 1 liver could not be transplanted because of a severe parenchymal injury (0.75% total organ losses). In 33 of 198 cases (16.7%) despite lesions to renal vessels or to the ureter, the kidneys were transplanted after back-table repair procedures. Vascular lesions were observed in 10% of the evaluated livers (8 of 102) and in 3 of 18 pancreatic grafts. In the literature, a total organ loss of 0.75% because of technical problems demonstrates a high standard of visceral organ procurement in our region. Hence, reparable vascular and ureteral lesions in 10% to 16.4% indicated the need for better surgical training and standardization in procurement techniques. We believe that double-checking both the organ and quality reports and giving immediate feedback to the procurement surgeons in cases of technical problems are effective ways to perform quality control. It must be our goal to increase the response rate of the quality forms.