Skip to main content
Skip secondary navigation

UNOS News Bureau

(804) 782-4730

newsroom@unos.org

Six-month monitoring report available for recent changes to deceased donor registration form

Published on: Friday, January 10, 2025

A data report is now available for the first six months of changes to the deceased donor registration (DDR) form, which the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) implemented in September 2023. The DDR is an important data collection tool organ procurement organizations (OPOs) use to record information about deceased donors for the OPTN. The policy change intended to promote more consistent and accurate data collection on deceased donors and provide organ procurement organization (OPO) staff with better direction and clarity for data entry.

The six-month report compares Deceased Donor Registration forms validated before policy implementation (March 14, 2023 - September 13, 2023) and after implementation (September 14, 2023 - March 13, 2024). Key observations include the following:

  • OPOs utilized the new “unknown” entry option for donor address fields, leading to a reduction in the proportion of forms where no value was entered for the zip code field
  • All forms in the post-policy period had a value entered for the donor weight, pronouncement of death date, and agonal phase date/time fields
  • Compared to the pre-policy era, the proportion of “Unknown” entries for the inotropic medications field increased for DCD donors in the post-policy era
  • There was a substantial increase in the proportion of forms with a recovery date entered for DBD donors post-implementation
  • Forms with no value entered for the core cooling flush field decreased significantly from the pre-policy period to the post-policy period for DBD donors
  • There were no “Unknown” entries for the controlled DCD field in the post-policy era
  • The proportion of forms in which the cardiac arrest since neurological event field had no value entered increased post-implementation
  • The proportion of each value type entered remained fairly constant in the pre and post policy periods for the risk factors for blood-borne transmissions, controlled DCD, history of myocardial infarction, macrosteatosis percentage, and lung perfusion fields

This policy change aligns with the OPTN Strategic Goal to promote the efficient management of the OPTN by ensuring accurate data is available to evaluate OPO performance, monitor potential disease transmission, and evaluate post-transplant outcomes, among other things. The OPTN Organ Procurement Organization Committee will continue to assess the impact of the modified DDR, with the next planned report for the 1-year period after policy implementation.