• Kevin Schulte, Christoph Borzikowsky, Axel Rahmel, Felix Kolibay, Nina Polze, Patrick Fränkel, Susanne Mikle, Benedikt Alders, Ulrich Kunzendorf, and Thorsten Feldkamp.
• Department of Nephrology and Hypertension, University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, Kiel; Institute of Medical Informatics and Statistics, Christian-Albrechts University, Kiel; German Organ Transplantation Foundation (DSO), Frankfurt am Main; The Medical Director's Staff Division of Clinical Affairs, University Hospital of Cologne; Department of Quality and Risk Management, University Hospital Leipzig; Department of Quality and Risk Management, University Hospital RWTH Aachen; Department of Quality Management, University Hospital of the Ruhr University Bochum, Knappschaft Hospital; Department of Anesthesiology, Surgical Intensive Care Medicine and Pain Therapy, University Hospital of the Ruhr University Bochum, Knappschaft Hospital.
• Dtsch Arztebl Int. 2018 Jul 9; 115 (27-28): 463-468.

BackgroundThe annual number of post-mortem organ donations in Germany has declined by more than 30% since 2010. The causes of this development have not yet been adequately determined.MethodsAll patients hospitalized in Germany between 2010 and 2015 (112 172 869 hospitalizations in total) were included in this nationwide secondary analysis. Among the deceased patients we identified those who had died in the presence of a brain damage and for whom organ donation was not excluded either by a medical contraindication or by the patient's not having been artificially ventilated. The analysis was also conducted separately for six German university hospitals.ResultsOver the period 2010-2015, the number of potential organ donors per year in Germany rose by 13.9%, from 23 937 to 27 258. This development was due to an increase in the number of deaths with severe brain damage as well as an increase in the percentage of patients who were treated with invasive ventilation before death. The contact quotient, i.e., the percentage of potential donors for whom contact was made with the German Foundation for Organ Transplantation (Deutsche Stiftung Organtransplantation, DSO) fell over this period from 11.4% to 8.2%. At the same time, the realization quotient (the percentage of potential donors who became actual donors) fell from 5.4% to 3.2%, and the conversion quotient (the percentage of potential donors for whom contact was made who became actual donors) fell from 47% to 39.1%. From 2010 to 2012, the falling realization quotient was accounted for mainly by the falling conversion quotient; from 2012 to 2015, it was accounted for mainly by the falling contact quotient. The contact and realization quotients among the six university hospitals studied differed markedly (by factors of 17.5 and 23.3, respectively), while the conversion quotients differed only minimally (by a factor of 1.3).ConclusionThe decline in post-mortem organ donation is due to a deficiency in the recognition and reporting of potential organ donors in hospital. If this process were better supported on the organizational and political level, far more organs could be transplanted.

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