The impact of COVID‐19 on organ donation and transplantation in the UK: lessons learned from the first year of the pandemic

Summary The COVID‐19 pandemic had a major impact on UK deceased organ donation and transplantation activity. We used national audit data from NHS Blood and Transplant to explore in detail the effects of the pandemic in comparison with 12 months pre‐pandemic, and to consider the impact of the mitigat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Anaesthesia 2022-11, Vol.77 (11), p.1237-1250
Main Authors: Plummer, N. R., Alcock, H., Madden, S., Brander, J., Manara, A., Harvey, D. J., Gardiner, D. C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Blood
Blood & organ donations
COVID-19
Disasters
emergency preparedness
Mechanical ventilation
organ donation
Organ donors
Pandemics
Patients
resilience
transplant
Transplantation
Transplants
Transplants & implants
Workload
Workloads
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Summary:Summary The COVID‐19 pandemic had a major impact on UK deceased organ donation and transplantation activity. We used national audit data from NHS Blood and Transplant to explore in detail the effects of the pandemic in comparison with 12 months pre‐pandemic, and to consider the impact of the mitigating strategies and challenges placed on ICU by ‘waves’ of patients with COVID‐19. Between 11 March 2020 and 10 March 2021, referrals to NHS Blood and Transplant of potential organ donors were initially inversely related to the number of people with COVID‐19 undergoing mechanical ventilation in intensive care (incident rate ratio (95%CI) per 1000 patients 0.93 (0.88–0.99), p = 0.018), although this pattern reversed during the second wave (additional incident rate ratio (95%CI) 1.12 (1.05–1.19), p 
ISSN:0003-2409
1365-2044
DOI:10.1111/anae.15833