Deceased Donation: Evacuating Assetsof a Houseon Fire

Scribbling the narratives of a doctor who bemoaned her inability to keep her mother alive through organ donation, this article takes us to a gamut of nuances of organ donation from deceased donors. This article traces the history of organ donation from deceased donors and briefly discusses a few milestones that were achieved for smoothing organ donation; the first milestone being the invention of a new term coma depasse (a state beyond coma) by two French physicians in 1959; second being the invention of a new medico legal definition that is brain death in 1968 and third being the introduction of immunosuppressant in the form of cyclosporine in 1980. While discussing two forms of deceased donation i.e., non-heart beat donation and heart beat donation, the concept of organ donation from deceased donors is equated with evacuating assets of a house that is on fire. This article focuses attention on a number of people centric challenges like increasing demand of organs, restricted acceptance of brain stem death, lack of awareness, lack of incentives and follow-up care of the recipients.A gamut of program centric challenges like establishing national organ donor registry, management of donors, uniting organizations through electronic linkages for effective organ allocation and sharing, evolving organ allocation and sharing mechanism, synchronizing team efforts for packaging, transportation and transplantation of retrieved organs besides establishing regular auditing system of retrieved organs are briefly described. This article stresses the need for uniform international guidelines for donation after cardiac and brain stem death. The article recommends introducing the concept of brain stem death and organ donation in the curricula of all the professional trainees taking care of patients and introducing a chapter in school curriculum for fostering the cause of saving lives through organ donation from brain stem dead donors in our country.