The Live Organ Donor Consensus Group has published a statement on living organ donation that gives priority to the best interests of the donor.
The consensus group included representatives of the National Kidney Foundation and the American Societies of Transplantation, Transplant Surgeons, and Nephrology. They formed the consensus after meeting in June with more than 100 representatives of the transplant community, including physicians, nurses, ethicists, psychologists, lawyers, scientists, social workers, transplant recipients, and living donors. The findings were published on December 13 in JAMA (2000;284:2919-2926).
Living donors "should be competent, willing to donate, free from coercion, medically and psychosocially suitable, fully informed of the risks and benefits as a donor, and fully informed of the risks, benefits, and alternative treatment available to the recipient. The benefits to both donor and recipient must outweigh the risks associated with the donation and transplantation of the living donor organ," the group concluded.
The group noted that the risks of a complication to live kidney donors are not the same as the risks of being a live donor of a liver, lung, intestine, or pancreas. Therefore, the latter procedures "should only be performed at centers with the necessary management resources and only by surgeons with appropriate expertise," the group said. The group also suggested that a steering committee be formed to oversee the development of a registry that would collect demographic, clinical, and outcome information on all living organ donors.
The executive committee for the Live Organ Donor Consensus Group included Francis L. Delmonico, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital; Charles Miller, MD, of Mount Sinai Hospital; and John Davis of the National Kidney Foundation.
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The full text is posted at http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/current/rfull/jst00018.html.
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