The live donor assessment tool: a psychosocial assessment tool for live organ donors

Psychosocial evaluation is an important part of the live organ donor evaluation process, yet it is not standardized across institutions, and although tools exist for the psychosocial evaluation of organ recipients, none exist to assess donors.

We set out to develop a semistructured psychosocial evaluation tool (the Live Donor Assessment Tool, LDAT) to assess potential live organ donors and to conduct preliminary analyses of the tool's reliability and validity.

Review of the literature on the psychosocial variables associated with treatment adherence, quality of life, live organ donation outcome, and resilience, as well as review of the procedures for psychosocial evaluation at our center and other centers around the country, identified 9 domains to address; these domains were distilled into several items each, in collaboration with colleagues at transplant centers across the country, for a total of 29 items. Four raters were trained to use the LDAT, and they retrospectively scored 99 psychosocial evaluations conducted on live organ donor candidates. Reliability of the LDAT was assessed by calculating the internal consistency of the items in the scale and interrater reliability between raters; validity was estimated by comparing LDAT scores between those with a "positive" evaluation outcome and "negative" outcome.

The LDAT was found to have good internal consistency, inter-rater reliability, and showed signs of validity: LDAT scores differentiated the positive vs. negative outcome groups.

The LDAT demonstrated good reliability and validity, but future research on the LDAT and the ability to implement the LDAT prospectively is warranted.