Impact of Regulations on Tissue Donation: Mandatory Referral of Hospital Deaths

Abstract

In Buenos Aires province, there has been surprisingly less tissue procurement activity following cardiac arrest than after brain-death cases. The purpose of this study was to analyse the impact of a regulation that made referral of all irreversible cardiac arrests mandatory to our organ procurement organisation. Data were collected from 7 hospitals in La Plata city during 7 months (from June 2000 to December 2000). The results showed that the regulation was effective because there was a striking increment of tissue procured following cardiac arrest during the analysed period, despite the low efficacy of the regulation (the referrals were 48% of the dead patients).