eISSN: None / ISSN: None
Register
Login
Netharland Journal of Critical Care
2022, Volume 30, Issue 3 : 88-93
Review
Organ donation after euthanasia in the Netherlands
 ,
 ,
 ,
 ,
1
Department of Anaesthesiology, Pain and Palliative Medicine, Radboud University Medical Center, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands
2
Department of Health Law, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands
3
Department of Hepatobiliary, Transplantation and Endocrine Surgery, Antwerp University Hospital & Antwerp University, Antwerp, Belgium
4
Department of Pediatric and Transplant Surgery, Amsterdam UMC, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
5
Department of Intensive Care Medicine, Maastricht University Medical Center, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands
Abstract
Organ donation after euthanasia is performed in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Canada. In these countries, altruistic patients, who often suffer from a neurodegenerative or psychiatric disease, are able to donate their lungs, liver, kidneys and pancreas. In the Netherlands, they even have the possibility to donate their heart. Research demonstrates that about 10% of all patients who undergo euthanasia might be medically eligible for organ donation. Preliminary short-term outcomes of transplants from these donors demonstrate good results. Intensive care physicians and nurses play an important supportive role in this combined procedure because of their expertise in end-of-life care and organ donation, and because these procedures are often performed in the intensive care unit. This article provides a practical summary of the various steps that need to be fulfilled to facilitate organ donation after a euthanasia procedure. Furthermore, it elaborates on the medical, legal and ethical aspects of organ donation after euthanasia, and identifies the possible advantages and challenges of this meaningful procedure. © 2022, Netherlands Society of Intensive Care. All rights reserved.
Keywords
License
Copyright (c) Netharland Journal of Critical Care
Creative Commons Attribution License Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
All papers should be submitted electronically. All submitted manuscripts must be original work that is not under submission at another journal or under consideration for publication in another form, such as a monograph or chapter of a book. Authors of submitted papers are obligated not to submit their paper for publication elsewhere until an editorial decision is rendered on their submission. Further, authors of accepted papers are prohibited from publishing the results in other publications that appear before the paper is published in the Journal unless they receive approval for doing so from the Editor-In-Chief.
Neth. J. Crit. Care open access articles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This license lets the audience to give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made and if they remix, transform, or build upon the material, they must distribute contributions under the same license as the original.
Recommended Articles
Right ventricular failure: Is it relevant for the intensivist?
96-97
Neuropsychological Predictors of Violent Criminal Behavior
1-6
Postoperative renal replacement therapy after hydroxyethyl starch infusion: A meta-analysis of randomised trials
4-9
Pocus series: Focused transoesophageal echocardiography, a view from the inside
130-139
Netharland Journal of Critical Care
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license. Open Access Publication.
Copyright © None. All rights reserved.