Girlanda R. Deceased organ donation for transplantation: Challenges and opportunities. World J Transplant 2016; 6(3): 451-459 [PMID: 27683626 DOI: 10.5500/wjt.v6.i3.451]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Raffaele Girlanda, MD, Associate Professor of Surgery, Transplant Institute, Georgetown University Hospital, PHC Building, 2nd Floor, 3800 Reservoir Road, NW, Washington, DC 20007, United States. raffaele.girlanda@gunet.georgetown.edu
Research Domain of This Article
Transplantation
Article-Type of This Article
Frontier
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Transplant. Sep 24, 2016; 6(3): 451-459 Published online Sep 24, 2016. doi: 10.5500/wjt.v6.i3.451
Deceased organ donation for transplantation: Challenges and opportunities
Raffaele Girlanda
Raffaele Girlanda, Transplant Institute, Georgetown University Hospital, Washington, DC 20007, United States
Raffaele Girlanda, Organ and Tissue Advisory Committee, Chair - Washington Regional Transplant Community, Annandale, VA 22003, United States
Author contributions: Girlanda R solely contributed to this paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Raffaele Girlanda, MD, Associate Professor of Surgery, Transplant Institute, Georgetown University Hospital, PHC Building, 2nd Floor, 3800 Reservoir Road, NW, Washington, DC 20007, United States. raffaele.girlanda@gunet.georgetown.edu
Telephone: +1-202-4443700 Fax: +1-202-4441170
Received: April 25, 2016 Peer-review started: April 26, 2016 First decision: June 16, 2016 Revised: June 25, 2016 Accepted: July 14, 2016 Article in press: July 18, 2016 Published online: September 24, 2016
Abstract
Organ transplantation saves thousands of lives every year but the shortage of donors is a major limiting factor to increase transplantation rates. To allow more patients to be transplanted before they die on the wait-list an increase in the number of donors is necessary. Patients with devastating irreversible brain injury, if medically suitable, are potential deceased donors and strategies are needed to successfully convert them into actual donors. Multiple steps in the process of deceased organ donation can be targeted to increase the number of organs suitable for transplant. In this review, after describing this process, we discuss current challenges and potential strategies to expand the pool of deceased donors.
Core tip: An increase in the number of donors is necessary to allow more patients to be transplanted before they die on the wait-list. Multiple steps in the process of deceased organ donation can be targeted to increase the number of organs suitable for transplant.
