Organ Donation and Utilization in the United States, 1997–2006

Deceased organ donation has increased rapidly since 2002, coinciding with implementation of the Organ Donation Breakthrough Collaborative. The increase in donors has resulted in a corresponding increase in the numbers of kidney, liver, lung and intestinal transplants. While transplants for most organs have increased, discard and nonrecovery rates have not improved or have increased, resulting in a decrease in organs recovered per donor (ORPD) and organs transplanted per donor (OTPD). Thus, the expansion of the consent and recovery of incremental donors has frequently outpaced utilization. Meaningful increases in multicultural donation have been achieved, but donations continue to be lower than actual rates of transplantation and waiting list registrations for these groups. To counteract the decline in living donation, mechanisms such as paired donation and enhanced incentives to organ donation are being developed. Current efforts of the collaborative have focused on differentiating ORPD and OTPD targets by donor type (standard and expanded criteria donors and donors after cardiac death), utilization of the OPTN regional structure and enlisting centers to increase transplants to match increasing organ availability.