P098: Solid organ donation from the emergency department - a systematic review

Abstract

Introduction: There is a significant gap between the number of organ donors and people awaiting an organ transplant; therefore it is essential that all potential donors are identified. Given the nature of Emergency Medicine it is a potential source of organ donors. The purpose of this study is to determine what percent of successful donors come from the Emergency Department (ED) and whether there are any missed potential donors. Methods: Electronic searches of EMBASE, MEDLINE, and CINAHL were performed July 7, 2017 using PRISMA guidelines. Primary literature in human adults were included if they described identification of patients in the ED who went on to become successful solid organ donors, or described missed potential donors in the ED. Data on the total population of actual or missed donors was required to allow calculation of a percentage. Studies describing non-solid organ donation, consent, ethics, survey of attitudes, teaching curricula, procurement techniques, donation outside the ED, and recipient factors were excluded. 2 authors independently screened articles for inclusion and discrepancies were resolved through consensus. Quality was assessed using STROBE for observational studies. Heterogeneity of patient populations precluded pooling of the data to conduct a meta-analysis. Results: 1058 articles were identified, 17 duplicates were removed, 800 articles were excluded based on title and abstract, and 217 full text articles were excluded, yielding 24 articles for the systematic review. For neurologic determination of death (NDD), ED patients comprised 4 44% of successful donors. ED death reviews revealed 0 84% of patients dying in the ED are missed as potential donors and hospital-wide death reviews revealed 13 80.9% of missed donors die in the ED. For donation after cardiac death (DCD), 4 20% of successful donors came from the ED and studies investigating potential donors suggest 2 36% of patients dying the in the ED could be potential DCD donors. The most common population of successful DCD organ donors was in traumatic cardiopulmonary arrest (TCPA), with 3.6 8.9% of TCPA patients presenting to the ED becoming successful donors. Conclusion: Patients dying in the Emergency Department are a significant source of both successful organ donors and missed potential donors. Emergency physicians should be familiar with their local organ donation protocol to ensure potential organ donors are not missed.