Management of the Potential Organ Donor in the ICU

This document was developed through the collaborative efforts of the Society of Critical Care Medicine, the American College of Chest Physicians, and the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations. Under the auspices of these societies, a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional task force was convened, incorporating expertise in critical care medicine, organ donor management, and transplantation. Members of the task force were divided into 13 subcommittees, each focused on one of the following general or organ-specific areas: death determination using neurologic criteria, donation after circulatory death determination, authorization process, general contraindications to donation, hemodynamic management, endocrine dysfunction and hormone replacement therapy, pediatric donor management, cardiac donation, lung donation, liver donation, kidney donation, small bowel donation, and pancreas donation. Subcommittees were charged with generating a series of management-related questions related to their topic. For each question, subcommittees provided a summary of relevant literature and specific recommendations. The specific recommendations were approved by all members of the task force and then assembled into a complete document. Because the available literature was overwhelmingly comprised of observational studies and case series, representing low-quality evidence, a decision was made that the document would assume the form of a consensus statement rather than a formally graded guideline. The goal of this document is to provide critical care practitioners with essential information and practical recommendations related to management of the potential organ donor, based on the available literature and expert consensus.