Background: This study was conducted to find out the current status of the brain death donor discovery project, so called Donation Improvement Program (DIP) implemented by Korean Organ Donor Agency (KODA) in the actual field.
Methods: The brain death donor discovery project at a local medical university hospital with 1,000 beds was investigated for 10 years from 2012 to 2021. Since 1998, Ulsan University Hospital has been the only university hospital in the metropolitan city of Ulsan, and is practically the only provider of organ donation and transplant-related medical care in the city. Therefore, it can be seen that it reflects the current situation of Korea as a whole. As of 2023, the population of 1,108,665 of Ulsan city corresponds to 2.150% of the population of the Republic of Korea, 51,558,034.
Results: During the 10 years from 2012 to 2021, the total number of brain death donors in Korea was 4,679, and the number of cases that occurred in the hospital was 97 (2.07%), which was almost the same as expected compared to the population. The number of patients discharged from the intensive care unit of the hospital due to death during the same period was 3,286, but the number of KODA notifications was only 415 (12.6%). Among them, 97 brain-dead donated organs, and the organ donation rate was 23.3%. The biggest reason for the low organ donation rate was the rejection of guardians in 241 cases (58.1%). There were 19 (4.5%) and 31 (6.7%) cases of nonbrain death or nondonation due to cardiac death, respectively.
Conclusions: The most urgent task in securing brain-dead organ donors in Korea is to enable medical personnel to more actively notify KODA of suspected brain-dead patients. It is time to systematically educate the public about the necessity and the actual implementation process of brain-dead organ donation.