Diaz JH.
AHSR FHSR Annu Meet Abstr Book. 1995; 12: 157.
Schools of Medicine and Public Health, Tulane University Medical Center, New Orleans, LA 70112, USA.
PROBLEMS AND OBJECTIVES. The shortage of infant organs available for transportation worldwide is critical. Fortunately, modern technology now provides viable kidneys from cadavers and transportable portions of livers from living adult donors. Thus, technology is reducing the need for infant donors of these organs. Infant heart donors, however, remain in great demand. More than 50% of infant transplant candidates die while waiting for a donor heart. This poster presentation will inform health services of the critical shortage of infant heart donors and provide arguments for and against selecting brain-absent amencephalic infants as heart donors for brain-normal infants dying of hypoplastic left heart syndrome. DATA AND METHODS. Worldwide experience with anencephalics as potential organ donors was reviewed from 1967 to the present. Data sources included international journals of medicine, genetics, epidemiology, bioethics and public health; adjudicated U.S. civil court cases and state regulations and statues. Data extracted included demographic and epidemiologic data on anencephalic births and life histories; U.S. civil, district and appellate court case decisions directing or prohibiting organ donation; state determination-of-death acts; and state uniform-anatomical-gift acts. Data was synthesized into either moral challenges or legal challenges to anencephalic organ donation. IMPLICATIONS FOR AUDIENCE. A redefinition of brain death applying only to human beings born without brains would make more donor hearts available to brain-normal infants dying of hypoplastic left heart syndrome, the most common indication for infant heart transplantation.
Publication Types:
Keywords:
- Adult
- Brain Death
- Cadaver
- Death
- Heart Transplantation
- Humans
- Infant
- Morals
- Tissue Donors
- Tissue Transplantation
- Tissue and Organ Harvesting
- Tissue and Organ Procurement
- United States
- ethics
- surgery
- transplantation
- hsrmtgs
Other ID:
UI: 102215732
From Meeting Abstracts