Influence of Basic Life Support on Donor Organs in Uncontrolled Donors After Cardiac Death

The aim of this study was to determine whether the application of basic life support (BLS) in patients who have experienced cardiac arrest and are subsequently referred to as uncontrolled asystole donors has any influence on the achievement of organs for subsequent transplantation.

Demographic data, BLS, cause of death, emergency response times, and organ donations were collected. The analysis of quantitative variables following normal distribution is shown as mean (SD), and Student t distribution was used for comparison purposes. The analysis of variables that did not follow the normal distribution is shown as median (IQR), and Wilcoxon test was applied for comparison purposes.

A total of 91 cases of possible uncontrolled donor transfers were analyzed. Basic life support was provided to 61 patients (67.7%), whereas no BLS was provided to 27 patients (23.3%). Of the group that received BLS, 39 (73.6%) were effective donors compared with the non-BLS group, in which 22 (62.9%) were effective donors (P = .28).

We did not find an association between performing BLS compared with non-BLS and organ donation.