Disposal of donor livers in Brazil: how to optimize their utilization rate in transplants?

Objective: To understand the professionals´ perception of the use of deceased donor liver for transplantation, the reasons to decline them, and propose strategies to increase their use safely.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional, descriptive qualitative-quantitative study. Professionals working with liver transplantation answered a self-administered, structured, and electronic questionnaire comprising 17 questions distributed into four sessions (demographic factors, perception of use of organs, reasons for disposal, and measures to favor their usage).

Results: A total of 42 professionals participated in the study. The rate of use of organs was considered low by 71.43% (n=30) of respondents or very low by 19.05% (n=8). Everyone agreed that it was possible to increase it. Thirty-one (73.81%) participants believed the expansion of the population of extended criteria donors affected this index negatively. Donor-related conditions were the most frequent category of reasons for refusing a liver for transplantation, being the findings during organ retrieval the most frequent reason in clinical practice. Enhanced training of intensive care teams in the treatment of donors was the primary measure selected to favor the use of the organs, followed by investment in new technologies to optimize its preservation/evaluate its function before transplantation.

Conclusion: Implementation of strategies to increase the rate of acceptance of livers is expected. Improvements in donor intensive care and implementation of new preservation technologies should favor the use of the organs.