Pediatric Organ Donation in Bavaria

Objectives: The number of organ donations in Germany has continuously decreased and reached a very low level in the last years. One of the main reasons of reduced pediatric organ donation maybe the direct exposure of the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) team to transplantations. At our PICU we treat patients who are A. listed for achieving solid donor organs, B. those immediately postoperatively after organ transplantation, C. as well as patients who donate organs. In this analysis we want to show the rate of pediatric organ donors from our department, compare them to the absolute rate of pediatric organ donors in Bavaria and try to estimate the rate of potential organ donors in Bavaria.

Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of organ donations from pediatric patients at our PICU between 01/2015 and 06/2017 in addition. We compared the rate of pediatric donors in our department with proven brain death to the absolute number of mortality in contrast to the rate of pediatric death and organ donations in Bavaria.

Results: Between 01/2015 and 06/2017, there were 27 pediatric patients who died during treatment on our PICU. 37% (10/27) fulfilled the criteria for brain death potentially suitable for organ donation. 70% (7/10) of these patients were finally organ donors. Compared with all pediatric patients who died on our PICU between 01/2015 and 06/2017 we had a rate of 26% (7/27) of organ donors. The number of pediatric organ donors in Bavaria between 01/2015 and 06/2017 was 20. 35% (7/20) of this donors were treated at our unit. The pediatric mortality figures of Bavaria of the year 2015 are available at this moment, overall 314 children died in 2015. Only 2.2% (7/314) of these children were organ donors, 29% (2/7) of them were from our department.

Conclusion: We found a big difference between the rates of organ donors from our department compared with the overall number of pediatric organ donors in Bavaria between 01/2015 and 06/2017. As the case mix for our PICU is likely similar to others, we assume that the awareness for the necessity of organ donations is different depending on patient experience of the PICU staff. While we treat children listed for organ transplant and experience death on the waiting list, the awareness for potential organ donors seems much higher. Based on this figures we believe that we could offer our colleagues support and make them more sensitive for organ donations.

No conflict of interest has been declared by the author(s).