Organ Procurement From Donors After Brain Death During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Experience of a High Prevalence Country.

Abstract

Our aim was to compare the donation process before and after the COVID-19 pandemic in an organ procurement unit in Iran and to discuss different strategies to address the impact of the pandemic on the donation process. All activities including donor detection, donor selection, family approach, donors characteristics, rate of organs per donor, and types of organs were compared between 2 intervals over 18 months (March 2020 to June 2021 [during the COVID19 pandemic] vs November 2018 to February 2020 [before the pandemic]). Before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, there were 218 and 137 brain dead donors with mean age of 42.6 ± 14.5 and 42.8 ± 15.5 years, respectively (P = .82). The prevalence of tumors leading to brain death decreased by more than half during the COVID-19 pandemic (P = .04). There was a 52% increase in cardiac death before organ retrieval during the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching 38% from 25% before COVID-19. During the 2 intervals, the number of organs per donor was 2.3 ± 1.2 and 2.2 ± 1.2 (P = .52). The rate of actual to potential donors before and during the pandemic was significantly different, with 42.16 ± 7.8% before and 29.9 ± 4.8% during the pandemic, mostly as a result of unsuitable donors. The time to obtain family consent during the COVID-19 pandemic was 35.1 ± 8.5 hours, which was a significantly longer length of time than before the pandemic (21.3 ± 12.3 hours; P = .008). In our organ procurement unit, which encompasses a population of 5.5 million in Tehran, Iran, the number of actual donors was reduced dramatically during the studied pandemic period. However, despite a high workload, all transplant centers and organ procurement units in Iran worked to identify and transplant the available organs to reduce wait list mortality.