March 15, 2021

Like almost everything else, living organ donation was radically altered by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Early in the pandemic, deceased donor transplants dropped by approximately half in the United States, and the number of living donor kidney and liver transplants between March 13, 2020 and June 1, 2020 was nearly 70% lower than the number performed during the same period in 2019.

Transplant programs and potential donors have faced hard questions about risk tolerance due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, how do the added risks of COVID-19 infection influence decisions by potential donors? How can medical teams and donors communicate about safety questions, health burdens and other concerns to help donors and doctors to make the best decisions during a rapidly changing pandemic?

These are some of the questions that researchers from Drexel University’s College of Medicine and Dornsife School of Public Health posed to prior and prospective organ donors across the United States. The results, recently published in the journal Kidney International Reports, provide guideposts for transplant providers aspiring to put donor concerns and priorities at the forefront of donation and other healthcare decisions.

“Organ donation is a truly unique healthcare scenario where a very healthy person chooses to undergo a major surgery to donate an organ to someone else in need. Under pandemic conditions, it is important to remember that this is a fundamentally different scenario than a patient who elects to undergo surgery for personal benefits, and there has been substantial debate on how to balance donor autonomy with the need to minimize transmission risks,” said senior author Meera Harhay, MD, an associate professor in Drexel’s College of Medicine and Dornsife School of Public Health. “My colleagues and I have wrestled with these questions throughout the pandemic, always acknowledging that there are so many people who desperately need these transplants.”

Read the full article on the Drexel News Blog: How Should We Support Living Organ Donors During a Worldwide Pandemic?