Relatives' Perception After Tissue Donation Experience: Results of a Postdonation Phone Survey

Postmortem tissue donation (TD) requires the establishment of strategies for family approach to clearly explain the characteristics of multi-tissue donation. In a tertiary university hospital with a long tradition of tissue generation, we designed a survey to be applied to tissue donor families to evaluate global hospital care, care from Transplant Coordinators (TC), quality and content of information given about TD, experience, and motivations after TD process.

A prospective phone survey of 10 multiple-choice items was conducted to all TD relatives that agreed to donate one or more tissues.

From the 166 calls made to TD relatives, 75 (45%) were answered: 50 were cornea donors and 25 were multiple-tissues donors. None of the relatives denied participating, the rest were not found. No statistical differences in demographical variables were found between both types of TD. The hospital and TC care perception, the quality of the given information about the processes of TD, the postdonation experiences in terms of procedures, and the impression about body appearance for relatives regardless of the type of donation, corneas or multiple tissues, were evaluated as good or very good for most of the TD relatives. Our study showed that 83% of the family members would agree to donate again; 40% of the relatives were surprised to be offered the option to donate; 10% did not know if they would donate again. Solidarity was the leading reason for TD.

The relatives' perception of care is a critical component of the quality evaluation of the TD process. The global evaluation results support our strategies for family approach.