[Brain-death unit and renal transplantation. Evaluation of 5 years' experience]

From 1977 to 1982, 170 potential organ donors were referred to "a brain-death unit". A vast majority of these patients were provided by intensive care units of district general hospitals from Ile-de-France. This fact confirms the dispersion of potential organ donors and the usefulness of an organ-procurement structure based in an University Hospital. Its effectiveness is demonstrated by an harvesting rate of 58%, largely over the already published reports in case of absence of such a center. It is concluded that the adoption of this system by other hospitals would significantly increase the number of cadaver kidney grafts available for transplantation whereas actually the number of kidney grafts remains dramatically low in France.