New Options for Organ Donation

In the early days of kidney transplantation, during the fifties and sixties, donor organs were initially obtained from both living donors and patients who died of a cardiac and circulatory arrest (the so-called ‘non-heart-beating donor’ - NHBD). At that time these were the only suitable organ donors available. This changed when brain death criteria were introduced around 1968, which meant that patients in whom cerebral death was diagnosed could also be considered as potential organ donors. After 1970 the use of these ‘heart-beating donors’ (HBD) became predominant. This trend is also closely linked to the development of effective immunosuppressive drugs and the progressing understanding of the importance of HLA compatibility between donor and recipient, through which the results of cadaveric donation and transplantation have improved substantially.