Organ Procurement in Forensic Deaths

Abstract

The need for organs has increased in the recent years, and this shortage will only worsen. In addition to the organs procured from brain-dead donors, a procedure for non-heart-beating donors was therefore developed. When deaths involve legal proceedings, the medical examiner makes the decision of whether or not to remove organs. To assist medical examiner in their decision-making, a number of forensic scientific societies aimed to develop recommendations, and legal adjustments were adopted. Nevertheless, these do present certain limits in special cases of procurement: Maastricht class I and II non-heart-beating donors. The peculiarity of this procedure stems from the urgency of the process. Compliance with temporal criteria would require that the deceased subject be removed from the crime scene even before the arrival of the authorities. This is extremely problematic legally and technically because forensic teams must collect evidence at crime scenes. Developments will have to be made to further minimize the restrictions on donations in forensic deaths.