Organ Yield from Deceased Donors: Initial Experience of an Organ Procurement Unit in Iran

To promote organ transplantation in Iran, organ procurement from deceased donors should be supported. For this policy, some organ procurement units have been established in university hospitals. Further researches in these activities are warranted to better elucidate the role of cadaveric organ transplantation in Iran. We retrospectively studied deceased organ donation from June 2005 through December 2007 in Organ Procurement Unit of Shariati Hospital in Tehran. We analyzed a total of 141 organs that were retrieved from 46 brain-dead organ donors. The median age of all donors was 29 years (min: six, max: 63). Two third of them were males. The average of harvested organs was 3.06 per donor and four organs per month. The main cause of brain death was head trauma (n=33, 72%). Organ yield per donor was correlated to the time of the organ procurement unit activity and increased during the three years (r=0.261, P=0.017). Other variables were not changed during this period. Donor characteristics such as age, sex, blood group, and causes of brain death impacted on the organ yield. This study showed that organ procurement units can improve organ yield and both experience and donor characteristics influence on the number of harvested organs.