International indicators of donation and solid organ transplantation

The main goal of any organ procurement organization (OPO) is to offer the greatest number of organs achievable with the goal of reducing mortality and the waiting list time of patients. Evaluation of OPO activity is mandatory to identify causes of missed potential donors seeking to implement changes in steps susceptible of improvement. In this review, we have presented the classical indicators of brain death along with new indicators. We observed that when the donor generation capacity is adjusted to the deaths, the indicator is more reliable for comparisons of countries with different mortality rates. We concluded that the indicators are complementary, because they measure different aspects of the process. To have a better understanding of the situation, country, institution, or hospital, one should simultaneously use all of the indicators.