Yesterday, on 19 December 2019, the Clinic for Anesthesia and Resuscitation, University Clinical Center Tuzla and the Donor Network of Bosnia and Herzegovina hosted a roundtable session under the theme “Solid organ transplantation after brain death- challenges, dilemmas and suggestions for improvement”.
The organizers said that the aim of the roundtable discussion was to establish guidelines for improving the process of organ and tissue transplantation and increasing the number of donations after brain death. The Donor Network of Bosnia and Herzegovina hold the view that health professionals should come forth with the problems they cope with in transplantation practice, and discuss potential means to overcome them. Important emphasis is placed on anesthesiologists- intensivists and hospital transplant program coordinators roles in transplantation medicine.
In the opening statement, Prof. Dr. Vahid Jusufović, director of the University Clinical Center Tuzla addressed participants and said that our hospital’s transplant teams have been performing transplant surgeries for over 20 years, but also the stagnation has been noticed in a cadaveric transplantation program during the last three years. ” We need to raise the public’s awareness of the importance of transplantation and cadaveric transplantation. The legal frameworks for transplantation surgery in B&H are similar to those in the EU member states, and organs from a donor cannot be taken without family’s consent. As a society we have to take responsibility, and there has to be interreaction. A lot of people sign donor cards, but there are no results”, said Prof. Jusufović and added his hopes that the Federal Ministry of Health in a near future plans to form a committee on organ transplantation that will be dedicated to advance standards and guidelines in the field of transplantation medicine.
Prof. Dr. Semir Imamović, head of the Clinic for Anesthesia and Resuscitation said that six brain deaths were diagnosed during the year 2019, but there were no consents for organ donation from family members. Prof. Imamović emphasized the importance of hospital transplantation coordinators in brain death determining protocols. “The hospital coordinator is involved in the whole process of a brain death determining, from finding a potential donor to his placement in the Intensive Care Union, where the diagnosis is confirmed and the brain death determined.” he said.
Conclusions of the roundtable discussion are: there is a need for continuing education of the population in order to promote a positive attitude towards organ donation; to intensify cooperation between clinical centers/hospitals in order to make transplant program first priority; all clinical centers to work collaboratively with the Center for Transplantation Medicine of the Federal Ministry of Health in order to identify and overcome challenges in organ transplantation in a timely manner.
