The Stunning Rise in Organ Donors Deceased from Drug Overdose
1Transplantation, Cleveland Clinic Florida, Weston, FL
2Research, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH
3Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency, University of Miami, Miami, FL
4Department of Pathology, Cleveland Clinic Florida, Weston, FL.
Meeting: 2018 American Transplant Congress
Abstract number: 365
Keywords: Donation, Kidney transplantation
Session Information
Session Name: Concurrent Session: Non-Organ Specific: Economics, Public Policy, Allocation, Ethics - 1
Session Type: Concurrent Session
Date: Monday, June 4, 2018
Session Time: 4:30pm-6:00pm
Presentation Time: 4:42pm-4:54pm
Location: Room 4C-4
In the recent years we noticed an increase in the number of local deceased organ donors who had died of drug overdose. This coincides with the nationwide opioid epidemic. We reviewed the deceased organ donor data from United Network of Organ Sharing for the past three decades. Between 1987 and 2016 there were 192147 deceased organ donors. Of these 6936 deceased donors died of drug overdose.
The mean age of these donors was 32.2 ± 10.9. Of theses, 3838 (55.3%) were males and 3098 (44.7%) were females. Among these donors, 5933 (85.5%) were Caucasians, 379 (5.5%) were African American, 496 (7.2%) Hispanics, and 128 (1.8%) were from other races.
The following organs were recovered and transplanted from these donors:10483 kidneys, 5260 livers, 2438 hearts, and 2121 lungs. The greatest number of donors with drug overdose were from the OPTN regions: 2, 3,5 and 10 as seen in the figure 2. 
Conclusion: Indeed there has been a 10 fold increase in the number of deceased organ donors who died of drug overdose. They represent a significant portion of the donor pool at this moment. All races were affected but Caucasians are heavily represented. These donors are in general younger with equal proportion of males and females.
CITATION INFORMATION: Agrawal N., Rhazouani S., Reino D., McMichael D., McClenney C., Sears D., Al Khalloufi K., Gebreselassie S., Ebaid S., Berho M., Zervos X., Sheffield C., Tzakis A. The Stunning Rise in Organ Donors Deceased from Drug Overdose Am J Transplant. 2017;17 (suppl 3).
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
Agrawal N, Rhazouani S, Reino D, McMichael D, McClenney C, Sears D, Khalloufi KAl, Gebreselassie S, Ebaid S, Berho M, Zervos X, Sheffield C, Tzakis A. The Stunning Rise in Organ Donors Deceased from Drug Overdose [abstract]. https://atcmeetingabstracts.com/abstract/the-stunning-rise-in-organ-donors-deceased-from-drug-overdose/. Accessed May 13, 2025.« Back to 2018 American Transplant Congress