Background & Aims: At present due to brain dead patients’ families refuse to organ donation, the number of available organs is less than the requesting cases. The aim of this comparative descriptive study was to compare opinions of donor and nondonor families about relevant factors in their decision making. Methods: participants included 175 members of 71 families (141 members of 56 donor famil...

In recent years there has been a renewed interest in presumed consent systems for organ donation. The U.K.'s Organ Donation (Presumed Consent and Safeguards) Bill of 2004 proposed a sweeping change in the law in the form of an opt-out system for the donation of cadaver organs. The Organ Donation Task-force in 2008 later examined the idea of presumed consent at length, before concluding that our...

[I]f a gift-of-life ethic is preferred and policy makers cannot solve the philosophical dispute over emotion in morality, a dispute that divides proponents of altruism and of routine procurement, then policy makers could judge whether the prevailing model of altruism has received a fair and sufficient test. This judgment would flow from an initial endorsement of altruism as a preferred public p...

The aim of this paper is to critically examine David Shaw, Wybo Dondorp, and Guido de Wert's arguments in favour of the procurement of human organs from human/nonhuman-primate chimeras, specifically from great-ape/human chimeras. My main claim is that their arguments fail and are in need of substantial revision. To prove this I first introduce the topic, and then reconstruct Shaw et al.'s posit...

The incidence of prospective organ donors in the United States and the techniques which are to used to guarantee their optimal use after identification are analyzed. Attitudes of the public and health professionals toward organ donation are discussed. The organization of the Pittsburgh Organ Procurement Agency and its relationship to other such ( agencies is described. Finally, the presently us...

University of Colorado, Denver, CO University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN)/United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), Richmond, VA University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI University of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore, MD University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR)/University of Mi...

This article provides an overview of solid organ transplantation in the United States and is produced as part of the 2007 OPTN/SRTR Annual Report. The Annual Report is prepared by the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) in collaboration with the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) under contract with the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). The r...

The disruption of an organ’s blood supply is obligatory in clinical transplantation occurring at the time of organ procurement. During this ischaemic period complex pathophysiological changes occur within the organ that leave it primed in a pro-inflammatory state. Although the re-establishment of blood flow is essential to halt ongoing ischaemic damage, the organ incurs additional injury. This ...

This article presents an overview of solid organ transplantation in the United States and is produced as part of the 2008 OPTN/SRTR Annual Report. The Annual Report is prepared by the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) in collaboration with the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) under contract with the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). The r...