Refusal of organ donation is common, and becoming more frequent. In Australia refusal by families occurred in 56% of cases in 1995 in New South Wales, and had risen to 82% in 1999, becoming the most important determinant of the country's very low organ donation rate (8.9/million in 1999). Leading causes of refusal, identified in many studies, include the lack of understanding by families of bra...

OBJECTIVE We sought to examine long-term outcomes at the University of Wisconsin for all lung transplant recipients who received lungs from donation after cardiac death donors since the initiation of this program in 1993. METHODS Eighteen (4.2%) of the 424 lung transplantations performed in 406 patients between January 1993 and April 2009 used lungs from donation after cardiac death donors. O...

There is a critical mismatch between available organs for transplant and acutely or critically ill patients with end-stage organ disease. Patients who may benefit from organ transplantation far outnumber available organs. The causes for this imbalance are multiple. One cause is family refusal to donate. A second cause is nonrecognition or delay in determination of brain death. A third cause is ...

Background. Studies done in potential donors for heart transplantation and in experimental animals have suggested that brain death can have major histopathological and functional effects on the myocardium. Methods and Results. We developed experimental models of brain death using dogs to study the hemodynamic and catecholamine changes, the extent of myocardial structural damage, and the recover...

Occasionally brain-dead organ donors go into cardiac arrest before reaching the operating theater. In such cases, the needed resuscitation of the potential donor stimulates a range of concerns among the responsible staff. If the intensive care unit staff are going to carry out the organ retrieval, they must rush in with demanding treatment measures such as defibrillation shock and cardiac massa...

OBJECTIVES Retrospective studies suggest that donor desmopressin (DDAVP) treatment improves renal transplant outcome. The present study tests the hypothesis that desmopressin neutralizes the graft's endothelium from proinflammatory angiopoietin 2 containing Weibel-Palade bodies in the donor, resulting in reduced Weibel-Palade body release at the time of reperfusion in the recipient. MATERIALS...