Organ procurement is the building block for lung transplantation monument. Having a good achievement requires sustained surveillance, proper planning and paying attention to minute details. We review here the effect of implementation of one simple policy on organ procurement rate at Organ Procurement Unit of Shaheed Beheshti University of Medical Science, Tehran, Iran. The organ procurement unit of Shaheed Beheshti University started its activity in December 2004. The unit established some educational workshops regarding brain death and organ procurement, mostly for ICU staffs. The aim of the program was to enhance the diagnosis and report of brain death from referring hospitals. In each hospital one coordinator, ICU head-nurse or supervising nurse, takes the responsibility of reporting the cases of definite or suspicious brain death to the unit for proper diagnosis and follow-up. In October 2006, a simple new policy was implemented. Based on which, one the organ procurement unit staffs made daily phone calls to authorities in-charged in all hospitals and asked about any case of brain death or deep coma. We reviewed the brain death registry to see if this policy was successful in diagnosis and recruiting new cases of brain death. For statistical analysis we used independent sample T-test. From total 93 brain dead organ donations until July 2008, 31 cases donated before the specified date and 62 donated after that date. The mean number of monthly organ donations was 1.6 ± 1.1 cases before and 2.8 ± 1.9 cases after the specified date. There mean number of annual donation was significantly higher after implementing the new strategy (p=0.013). We observed that a simple follow up policy by phone calls has nearly doubled the brain death organ donation rate in a short period of time. Such simple yet very effective policies could have implemented in other centers. We conclude that paying attention to some minute details may yield a great benefit for organ transplantation system.
Volume : 6
Issue : 4
Pages : 107
Transplant Research Center, Massih Daneshvari, Hospital, Darabad-Niavaran, Tehran, Iran