Evidence map›Paper›PMID 35101144›Full record

ArticleIsrael journal of health policy research2022

Organ donation in the time of COVID-19: the Israeli experience one year into the pandemic-ethical and policy implications.

Eyal Katvan, Jonathan Cohen, Tamar Ashkenazi

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Article in Israel journal of health policy research, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

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1citing papers in PubMed
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1 · What the graph read from it

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3 · Its place in the literature

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1 citing paper in PubMed.

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Eyal KatvanBar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.
Jonathan CohenIsrael National Transplantation Center, 15 Moses Street, Tel Aviv, Israel. jdcspc@gmail.com.ORCID 0000-0002-4379-8767
Tamar AshkenaziIsrael National Transplantation Center, 15 Moses Street, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

purposeTo present the response of the Israel National Transplantation Center (NTC) to the evolving challenge of COVID-19, the impact on deceased organ donation and living organ kidney donation during 2020, and resultant policy and ethical implications.

methodsData collected included (i) for deceased donors, the total number of potential organ donors, if hospitalized in ICU or general ward, cause of death, number of family authorizations and refusals, number of actual donors, number of organs transplanted/donor and total number of transplants performed; (ii) for living-kidney-donors (related or altruistic), the number of procedures performed; and (iii) the number of patients registered on the national organ waiting-list.

resultsFollowing the first case (February 2020), deceased organ donation continued uninterrupted. The total number of potential donors was similar to 2019 (181 vs. 189). However, the number of families approached for donation decreased significantly (P = 0.02). This may be attributed to COVID-19-imposed limitations including fewer brain death determinations due to limited possibilities for face-to-face donor coordinator-donor family interactions providing emotional support and visual explanations of the medical situation. Fewer donors were admitted to ICU (P = 0.1) and the number of organs retrieved/donor decreased (3.8/donor to 3.4/donor). The overall result was a decrease of 24.2% in the number of transplant procedures (306 vs. 232). Living kidney donation, initially halted, resumed in May and the total number of procedures increased compared to 2019 due to a significant increase in altruistic donations (P < 0.0001), while the number of related-living donations decreased.

conclusionThis study of organ donation during a crisis has informed the introduction of policy changes in the NTC including the necessity to mobilize rapidly a "war room", the use of innovative virtual tools for contact-less communication, and the importance of cooperation with hospital authorities in allocating scarce health-care resources. Finally, the pandemic highlighted and intensified ethical considerations, such as under what circumstances living kidney donation be continued in the face of uncertainty, and what information to provide to altruistic donors regarding a prospective recipient, in particular whether all options for related living donation have been exhausted. These should be addressed now.

Indexed as

COVID-19Tissue and Organ ProcurementHumansIsraelLiving DonorsPandemicsPolicySARS-CoV-2Covid-19 pandemicLiving kidney donationOrgan donation

Identifiers

PMID35101144
PMCPMC8802285

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