Effect of organ donor hospital volume on transplantable organs

Editor's Note

Hospitals managing the highest volume of deceased organ donors were 52% more likely to recover an above-average number of transplantable organs per donor than low-volume hospitals in this study. The study included data from 4,427 donors across 384 hospitals.

High-volume hospitals had an organ yield (ie, rate of organs transplanted per donor) of 0.4 more than lowest- volume hospitals.

Efforts should be made to share practices from these high-volume hospitals, and centralization of donor care should be considered, the authors say.

Identification of strategies to improve organ donor utilization remains imperative. Despite the association between hospital volume and outcomes for many common disease processes, there have been no studies to assess the impact of organ donor hospital volume on organ yield.