What are the differences, if any, between kidneys retrieved from heartbeating donors and those retrieved from non-heartbeating donors?
Heartbeating donors are patients who have suffered permanent and irreversible brain injury such that their heart will stop beating in the next week or so. Once the patient’s relatives have given permission for donation and tests demonstrate irreversible brain injury and the patient has been certified dead, the donor is taken to the operating theatre for retrieval of the kidneys and other organs whilst the heart is still beating. In a patient who suffers a cardiac arrest and cannot be resuscitated, it is occasionally possible to flush the kidneys and liver with a cold preserving solution and then remove these organs quickly before irreversible damage occurs. In this situation, the heart is no longer beating, hence the term non-heartbeating. It used to be felt that non-heartbeating donor kidneys were less viable and that their use gave rise to lower transplant success rates.
Heartbeating donors are patients who have suffered permanent and irreversible brain injury such that their heart will stop beating in the next week or so. Once the patient’s relatives have given permission for donation and tests demonstrate irreversible brain injury and the patient has been certified dead, the donor is taken to the operating theatre for retrieval of the kidneys and other organs whilst the heart is still beating. In a patient who suffers a cardiac arrest and cannot be resuscitated, it is occasionally possible to flush the kidneys and liver with a cold preserving solution and then remove these organs quickly before irreversible damage occurs. In this situation, the heart is no longer beating, hence the term non-heartbeating. It used to be felt that non-heartbeating donor kidneys were less viable and that their use gave rise to lower transplant success rates. The most recent survey of UK data by UK Transplant indicates that success rates for non-heartbeating donor transpl
