Donation in Private Clinics as an Alternate Strategy to Increase the Pool of Donors

Abstract

In recent years, the donation process is being characterized by a decreased number of brain deaths and a logistical shift toward cardiac-death donation, both controlled and uncontrolled, in Spain. As we know, cardiac-death donors produce fewer usable organs than brain-death donors. Therefore, many of the Spanish transplant coordinators are working to find new strategies that bring efficiency to donor detection. Since 2012, at the Virgen del Rocío University Hospital, Seville, we have been trying to obtain more donors with the use of a huge logistical and administrative effort of all the elements that make up the donation and transplantation teams, because we have sought to get organ donors in all private clinics in the city. The result of this effort has succeeded in increasing the donation rate in Seville to 3 donors and >6 usable organs per year. This paper also analyzes the characteristics of these donors, comparing our results with our community and the country. The conclusion of all this, we believe, encourages persevering in those efforts and endorses a strategy that could be applied in other parts of the world with good results in terms of transplanted organs.