Cell & Tissue Transplantation & Therapy

The risk of transmission of potentially fatal infectious diseases from donor to recipient via tissue transplantation cannot practically be eliminated, but must be minimised. Careful screening of potential and actual donors is the major available tool to achieve this. Screening usually involves investigation of patient medical records for not only diagnoses, but also risk factors or markers for disease. Dementia is one such marker identified by tissue banks as it is one of the few indicators of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD). However, CJD accounts for only a very small percentage of dementia cases in Australia and dementia is extremely common in the potential donor population.

Aim: The aim of this investigation was to analyse the reasons for excluding potential donors from donation and to compare the number of individuals excluded due to dementia with the expected number of deaths due to CJD during the same period.

Methodology: The Queensland Eye Bank is automatically notified of deaths which occur within many Queensland hospitals. Each notification is investigated to determine suitability for tissue donation using a standard procedure and the reason for exclusion from donation and/or transplantation is recorded. The death notifications received by the Queensland Eye Bank in 2007 were analysed to determine how many potential and actual donors were excluded due to dementia.

Results: In 2007, of the 4053 death notifications received by QEB, 3575 were not considered suitable for donation. Of these, 168 (4.2%) were excluded on the basis of dementia.