Trauma Registries and Organ Transplantation

Abstract

<h3>To the Editor.—</h3> I read with great interest the recent article on trauma registries by Drs Pollock and McClain.¹It would seem that such registries could beextremely valuable to those of us who are involved in organ transplantation. For many years, I have bemoaned the fact that existing national data sets, including the National Hospital Discharge Survey and the National Death Index, both maintained by the National Center for Health Statistics, do not include data on the diagnosis of brain death. Such information would be invaluable in efforts to estimate the size of the potential organ donor pool. Thus far, we have only been able to derive such estimates crudely, and they are the subject of much uncertainty.^2-6 Since many organ donors are the victims of traumatic death, it is evident that trauma registries could be very helpful in estimating the size of the potential donor pool.