What do we know about eligible organ donors? Analysis of data from a local Registry

The imbalance between supply and demand for organ donations remains a hot topic for international debate. Brain-dead organ donors (DBDs) constitute the majority of organ donations in Poland.

To identify the factors that guided intensivists in qualifying a brain-dead patient as a potential organ donor, and whether the factors that significantly influenced the decision to qualify constituted an actual contraindication.

We performed a retrospective study based on data from the Silesian ICU Registry from 2010-2020 and publicly available information from Poltransplant. We compared the demographic and clinical characteristics of patients diagnosed with brain death who were identified as eligible and ineligible organ donors.

Out of 25,465 patients enrolled in the Silesian ICU Registry, brain death was diagnosed in 385 (1.51%) study participants, and 61 of the records were excluded due to data incompleteness. In the remaining group (n = 324), there were 201 men and 123 women. Of them, only 180 study participants were reported as eligible donors (55.5%). Six patients had absolute contraindications to organ donation.

A relatively small number of patients diagnosed with brain death were qualified by intensivists as eligible organ donors, with a limited number of medical factors influencing this decision. This means that other non-medical factors may affect the qualification of DBDs for organ procurement.