Stand-alone organ donor facility is more efficient than a hospital

Transplant surgeons at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO, claim that performing organ retrievals at a stand-alone facility, rather than a hospital, is more efficient and lowers costs considerably.

Currently, crowded operating room schedules cause delays that make retrieving organs from brain-dead donors in hospitals logistically challenging and time consuming.

Transplant teams travel to donors' hospitals to perform surgery - usually at night, when operating rooms are more likely to be free. As the surgery is time-sensitive, being able to access operating rooms without delay is critical.

"Organ donors often are given low priority in hospitals because of scheduled surgeries or emergency cases," explains the study's senior author, Dr. William C. Chapman, the Eugene M. Bricker Chair of Surgery and surgical director of the Washington University transplant center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

Additionally, the transplant team will usually only have assistance from local staff, who may be unfamiliar with organ donation procedures.

But in a study published in the American Journal of Transplantation, the Washington University surgeons report successful results in moving donors from hospitals to a regional stand-alone facility specializing in organ donation.

How do stand-alone organ donation facilities work?

"The magnitude of these changes has been transformative, with no negative effects on the organ donation process," says the study's first author, Dr. M.B. Majella Doyle, a Washington University liver transplant surgeon at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, who also directs the adult liver transplant program.