Cases of Brain Death and Organ Donation Rates in Eskisehir

Abstract

Brain death is defined as the irreversible loss of brain and brainstem functions, making organ harvesting legally possible. We have aimed to determine the current donation and harvesting rates in Eskisehir, Turkey to achieve further donation rates by improving the conditions.We have analyzed the data of brain death cases from Eskisehir Osmangazi University Hospital and 2 state hospitals based on a time interval between 2013 and 2017. The evaluation of 113 cases of brain death revealed that organ harvesting could be performed in 25.7% of those cases, whereas organ donation was not approved in 74.3% of those deceased patients due to refusal of the legally responsible relatives. The results of a study carried out in Bursa as the first-ranked province in the Organ Donation List of Turkey in 2012 suggested that relatives permitted organ donation in only 34.6% of 79 brain death cases between 2007 and 2014, whereas that rate was 8.8% of 4.9 cadaver donations per million persons in Bursa, Turkey. A comparison between the results of Eskisehir and a neighboring province showed that lower rates of organ donation in Eskisehir may be caused by absence of a transplantation center in the province, therefore, putting the transplantation center of the university hospital into service will accelerate the rates of organ donation in Eskisehir.