Non-survivors of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest should always be considered potential non-heart-beating organ donors.

摘要

We read "with great interest the recent paper by Gratrix et al. in which it was concluded that only a small increase in donor organs could be potentially achievedby considering non-heart-beating (NHB) donation from patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). The aim of the study was to identify patients suitable for NHB donation - the main result being that only four of 57 (7%) OHCA patients who died after "withdrawal of life support would qualify as NHB donors. Patients were excluded from the study because of age, medical history, but mainly because the length of time between stopping treatment and death exceeded 120 min.