Recent news reports noted the death of a transplant recipient that appears to be linked to rabies transmitted from a deceased organ donor. Other recipients of organs from the same donor continue to survive.
The OPTN/UNOS Ad Hoc Disease Advisory Transmission Committee has developed multiple guidance documents on recognizing and reporting potential infectious diseases in organ donors. While these documents have been approved by the OPTN/UNOS Board of Directors, they are not policies and do not carry the monitoring and enforcement implications of policy. However, they are intended to provide clinical resource information to donation and transplantation professionals in the interest of reducing current and future risk.
This recent incident is one example of the types of issues the guidance documents address. You can access the guidance documents below on both the OPTN website and on Transplant Pro.
- Guidance for reporting potential deceased and living donor-derived disease transmission events.
- Guidance for HTLV-1 Screening and Confirmation in Potential Donors and Reporting Potential HTLV-1Infection
- Guidance for recognizing central nervous system infections in potential deceased organ donors
- Guidance for identifying risk factors for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) during evaluation of potential living kidney donors
