Innovative surgical techniques address the organ donation crisis, ... don't they?

Retrospectively analysing the role that innovative technique and strategies have played to face organ shortage during the last decades, and elaborating rationally about their potential contribution to expand organ availability in the coming future.

Current organ donation crisis proceeds from both decreasing offers, qualitatively and quantitatively, and steadily increasing demand. Innovative surgical techniques using the existing donor pool have been extensively used for paediatric transplantation, but these techniques both have been insufficiently implemented in overall transplant activity to meet the demand, and are less usable on the emerging potential pool of donors ('extended-criteria' and nonheart-beating donors), as combining both approaches could carry a higher risk of complications.

The future is emerging through complementary approaches and strategies in which innovative techniques have a role to play to match the existing pool with the paediatric demand, with an increasing attention to donor management and organ care and with development of preprocurement and postprocurement new therapies.