Donor Categories: Heart-beating, Non-heart-beating and Living Donors; Evolution within the last 10 Years in UZ Leuven and Collaborative Donor Hospitals

Abstract

Over the past 10 years, the University Hospitals Leuven and their group of Collaborative Donor Hospitals (~20) have tried to maximize their contribution to the national and Eurotransplant donor pool. In this time period, 1042 potential donors and 703 effective donors were coordinated and their organs allocated through Eurotransplant. This activity represented ~30% of the national donor pool and ~32% of the national organ pool. For Belgium, the non-heart-beating donor activity represented 11.38% of all donors in 2006. Since 1997, 167 potential live donors have been screened in our center. Of these, 48 transplants (28.74%) (39 kidneys - 9 livers) have been performed. A boost of screened candidates was seen over the last 3 years, with a 500% increase of records being evaluated. Although the Belgian live donation activity remains one of the lowest in the world, there has been a clear increase over the last 3 years with about 10% of all kidney transplant activity originating now from live donors.

Key Words:

• Organ donation
• deceased donors
• living donors
• non-heart-beating donors

Additional information

Notes on contributors

F. Van Gelder

F. Van Gelder Senior Transplant Coordinator Department of Abdominal Transplant Surgery and Transplant Coordination Herestraat 49 B-3000 Leuven, Belgium Tel.: [phone] Fax: [phone] E-mail: [email protected]