Kidney donor profile in Spain: risks factors and characteristics of the organs rejected for transplantation.

During recent years organ donation in Spain has increased by 100%, with important changes seen in the donor profile. Mean age has increased by more than 10 years, being nowadays more than 33% of our donors over 60 years. Ten years ago road traffic trauma was the main cause of death, while now most of our donors die due to stroke and only 21% die in a traffic accident. This changes lead to an increase in the number of kidneys discarded for transplantation every year. Among the 2517 kidneys retrieved during 2001, 567 were discarded, mainly due to different glomerular, interstitial or vascular pathologic damage. The older is the donor the higher is the percentage of kidneys discarded. It has to be underlined that an increased number of livers from donors, whose kidneys could not be used, are being grafted (141 in 2001 over 281 donors from whom no kidney could be grafted and over a total number of 1335 donors). Only 5% of kidneys were discarded due to technical problems. An important number of kidneys were discarded due to malignancy suspicion or diagnosis (12.3%). Organ donation has improved but kidney transplantation did not in parallel, due to the increasing number of kidneys discarded for transplantation in close relation with the evolution of donor's characteristics. Organ donation rate is around 33 donors per million population while efficient organ donation rate is around 30 donors per million. Only from 67% of donors both kidneys can be grafted and from 20% of donors no kidney can be used. These data will not change our policy, at least by the moment, we will continue to evaluate every potential brain death donor with the aim of studying if organs can be used. It is true that in 50% of cases over 70 years no organ can be used after retrieval and microscopic exam, but in the other 50% we can proceed.