One thousand prospective cadaveric renal transplant donors.

In a community where cadaveric renal transplantation is the mainstay for the treatment of chronic renal failure a review of 1,000 prospective cadaveric renal donors shows that failure by the medical and surgical teams in the intensive care units to notify the transplant team every time of a potential donor is the major cause for the lack of donor organs. Lack of consent by the donor's relatives is also a significant factor but is less common when the donor is brain dead on a ventilator than when they still have spontaneous respiration. Gradually the transplant team is persuading their colleagues in medicine and trauma to help but at the present rate of progress it will be another decade before enough kidneys are available.