Abstract
Driven by disease trends, such as obesity and metabolic syndrome, that are increasingly prevalent in the general population, we aimed to evaluate the comorbidities and attributes of the brain-dead organ donor population over time in a longitudinal study.
We compared overall health and baseline attributes of organ donors between 2000-2005 and 2006-2012 using our prospective transplant database. Descriptive and comparative analyses of the 2 historical cohorts were performed.
A total of 1040 brain-dead organ donors were included in our analysis: 496 from the 2000-2005 period and 544 from the 2006-2012 period. Our analysis revealed that donors from the recent (2006-2012) period were more likely to have increased body mass index (26.4 ± 6.0 v. 25.0 ± 4.8, p = 0.003), smoking history (57.0% v. 27.2%, p < 0.001), coronary artery disease (14.3% v. 3.2%, p = 0.015) and dyslipidemia (19.1% v. 4.2%, p < 0.001), but less likely to have concurrent infection (1.1% v. 7.9%, p < 0.001) than those from the earlier period.
Our data suggest that the characteristics and comorbidities of brain-dead organ donors have somewhat deteriorated over the last decade. Further studies are needed to evaluate the impact of these health attributes on donated organ utilization and outcomes.