Protocol Question

[yakc130]

I have a friend who asked recently if I knew of any department that had a policy in place to continue resuscitation in the field in order to maintain status of the deceased for organ donation.

Does anyone do this? I know that time is important, but is not a single determining factor.

Info appreciated.Thanks.

 

[Spock]

Good question and I think the value of the organs harvested would be minimal after prolonged cardiac arrest.  Tissue would probably be viable but other than that, I doubt there is value.  I took my organ donator tag from my drivers license a few years ago after getting summoned to the OR late at night for a donor harvest only to find the staff was doing CPR when they arrived in the OR.  

Organ donation is a very personal decision but that episode changed my mind.

May the tube be with you.

Spock

[Off Label]

I'm not an organ donor, nor am I trying to sell anyone on it, but there are many harvestable tissues that don't require a beating heart. Corneas, vein, connective tissue, bone etc. are all useful to somebody somewhere.

 

On ‎5‎/‎6‎/‎2016 at 7:32 PM, yakc130 said:

I have a friend who asked recently if I knew of any department that had a policy in place to continue resuscitation in the field in order to maintain status of the deceased for organ donation.

Does anyone do this? I know that time is important, but is not a single determining factor.

Info appreciated.Thanks.

 

Sounds pretty unethical to me.... I'm not aware of any such directive where I am and I'd be shocked of there was one. Careful determination of brain death needs to be established and if the goal of the resuscitation effort is to deliver a "brain dead" patient to the ICU, I'd say someone would have some serious explaining to do.

Even the idea of continuing resuscitation to give the patient the benefit of the doubt with the secondary consolation of ending up with an organ donor is creepy IMO.

 

[yakc130]

55 minutes ago, Off Label said:

 there are many harvestable tissues that don't require a beating heart. Corneas, vein, connective tissue, bone etc. are all useful to somebody somewhere.

 

This is what we discussed when he brought this up. Why would you need to continue?

Apparently, he was asked this by someone from a neighboring department. I guess this other person had thought that they had heard about it being done somewhere and were curious if anyone else had heard about it.

[Off Label]

My mistake, so sorry. In my haste, I didn't read the post as carefully as I should have and then commented. My apology for the controversy. I'll maybe check with you first next time.

[yakc130]

No worries. This is the kind of info I'm looking for. What do folks have or do in their neck of the woods.

 

More info is better.