WON-SUK LEE, SANGTAE CHOİ, JİNMO KANG, DOOJİN KİM, YONGSOON CHUN
Experimental and Clinical Transplantation - 2021;19(6):522-526
Objectives: We investigated clinical characteristics and demographics of brain death in patients from a single center in Korea to identify possible changes in organ procurement by comparing early and late periods. Materials and Methods: Potential donors diagnosed as brain dead and who had provided organ donation consent from May 2000 to May 2020 were considered. Donors were divided into 2 categories: early period (2000-2010) and late period (2011-2020). Demographic data, clinical risk factors, cause of death, use of inotropic and vasoconstrictor agents, laboratory findings, intensive care unit stay data, loss of donors, and number of donated organs were analyzed. Results: Mean age of donors significantly increased in the late period (36.0 ± 12.0 vs 46.0 ± 15.1 years), but there were no significant differences in the proportion of females and the number of pediatric donors (<18 years). The number of donors who smoked decreased (61% vs 41%), but hypertension rate increased significantly in the late period (17.4% vs 31.0%). In the late period, fewer brain dead donors were lost (19.0% vs 7.59%) and use of vasoconstrictor agents was more frequent (25.3% vs 64.5%) than use of inotropic agents (73.1% vs 49.3%). In the late period, heart (19.0% vs 37.3%) and lung (0% vs 18.3%) procurement rates increased and the number of transplanted organs per donor increased (2.58 ± 1.6 vs 3.14 ± 1.50; P = .016). Causes of death were primarily from head traumas (34.4%), cerebral aneurysms (21.7%), spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (21.3%), and asphyxia/hanging (16.3%). Head trauma decreased in the late period (46% vs 29.7%; P = .021) but still constituted the most common cause of death. Conclusions: We found no definite demographic changes in brain dead donors. Donors with cerebrovascular disease increased annually, but trauma was still the most common cause of brain death, with suicides being highly frequent.
