The impact of meeting donor management goals on the number of organs transplanted per donor: results from the United Network for Organ Sharing Region 5 prospective donor management goals study.

Objective: Many organ procurement organizations have implemented critical care end points as donor management goals in efforts to increase organs transplanted per donor after neurologic determination of death. Although retrospective studies have demonstrated an association between meeting donor management goals and organ yield, prospective studies are lacking.

Design: In June 2008, nine donor management goals were prospectively implemented as a checklist and every donor after neurologic determination of death was managed to meet them.

Achieving donor management goals before deceased donor procurement is associated with more organs transplanted per donor.

Background: There is a national shortage of organs available for transplantation. Implementation of preset donor management goals (DMGs) to improve outcomes is recommended, but uniform practices and data are lacking. We hypothesized that meeting DMGs before organ procurement would result in more organs transplanted per donor (OTPD).