|
Project Title:
Validation of Criteria Identifying Candidates For Non-Heart Beating Organ Donors
Funding Agency:
Health and Service Administration
Total Project Period:
Sep 01, 2003 - Aug 31, 2004
Principal Investigator:
Michael DeVita, MD
Project Summary:
There are several major obstacles to proliferation of NHBOD programs. First, identification of patients likely to die within an hour after discontinuation of life supporting medications and treatments is difficult because there is no data upon which to base donor criteria. The second issue is impairing the growth of non-heart beating organ donation is the notion that so few organs are likely to be procured from non-heart beating cadavers that it is not worth the effort. Third, and finally, there is an impression that organs from NHBOD are inferior to those obtained from brain-dead (also known as heart-beating) cadavers. The few centers in the U.S. that are doing a large number of transplants of organs procured from NHBOD are starting to reverse this opinion. Thus the critical data required to answer two of the three major obstacles to non-heart beating organ donation do not exist, and are unlikely to be obtained without a funded study. Fortunately, all three questions can be answered with data derived from a single set of patients.
A prospective, observational study of patients who are to have life support removed is required. 500 of these patients who also meet the UNOS Critical Care Advisory Council NHBOD Criteria, will have life support removed according to routine. Other demographic information like age, type of disease and co-morbidities, APACHE 3 score, gender, will be recorded. The patients should be observed from the time of withdrawal of support to death. Data collected will include ICU physiologic data obtained from devices already in place, as well as the medications delivered during the dying process. No investigators need be in the room, and data can be collected by the patient’s own ICU nurse easily without disrupting family.
|
|
