Ten Years of Quality Monitoring of Abdominal Organ Procurement in the Netherlands and Its Impact on Transplant Outcome

Abstract

In this study, 10 years of procurement quality monitoring data were analyzed to identify potential risk factors associated with procurement-related injury and their association with long-term graft survival. All deceased kidney, liver, and pancreas donors from 2012 to 2022 and their corresponding recipients in the Netherlands were retrospectively included. The incidence of procurement-related injuries and potential risk factors were analyzed. Of all abdominal organs procured, 23% exhibited procurement-related injuries, with a discard rate of 4.0%. In kidneys and livers, 23% of the grafts had procurement-related injury, with 2.5% and 4% of organs with procurement-related injury being discarded, respectively. In pancreas procurement, this was 27%, with a discard rate of 24%. Male donor gender and donor BMI >25 were significant risk factors for procurement-related injury in all three abdominal organs, whereas aberrant vascularization was significant only for the kidney and liver. In the multivariable Cox regression analyses, procurement-related injury was not a significant predictor for graft failure (kidney; HR 0.99, 95% CI 0.75–1.33, p = 0.99, liver; HR 0.92, 95% CI 0.66–1.28, p = 0.61, pancreas: HR 1.16; 95% CI 0.16–8.68, p = 0.88). The findings of this study suggest that transplant surgeons exhibited good decision-making skills in determining the acceptability and repairability of procurement-related injuries.