Audience: (Please share this notice with anyone in your organization who would benefit from it.)
OPOs
- Quality Managers/Coordinators, Organ Placement Coordinators, Organ Procurement Adm/Mgr, Organ Procurement Coordinators, Tissue Procurement Coordinators, Medical Directors, Data Coordinators, Physicians, Quality Director/Managers
Kidney transplant programs
- Physicians, Clinical Coordinators, Program Administrators/Managers, Program Directors
Implementation date
Sept. 14, 2023
At-a-glance
Effective Sept. 14, 2023, new kidney biopsy fields will be added to DonorNet® and TIEDI®. These new fields aim to reduce inconsistencies in both the reporting of kidney biopsy results as well as the specific biopsy parameters reported.
What you need to do
Starting Sept. 14, organ procurement organizations (OPOs) will be required to provide the following biopsy data points on the donor record in DonorNet and on the DDR in TIEDI:
- Biopsy type
- Tissue preparation technique
- Number of glomeruli
- Number of globally sclerotic glomeruli
- Percent globally sclerotic glomeruli
- Nodular mesangial glomerulosclerosis
- Interstitial fibrosis/tubular atrophy
- Vascular disease
- Arteriolar hyalinosis
- Cortical necrosis
- Fibrin thrombi
A list of these criteria and planned response options is available in the policy notice. OPOs should coordinate with their designated pathologists to ensure these data points are available when kidney biopsies are performed.
No action is required on behalf of transplant programs. New biopsy criteria in UNetSM are intended to aid in kidney offer acceptance decisions and increase potential for future data analysis.
Additional details
Members may notice additional small changes to existing kidney biopsy fields including a label change for the existing ‘percent glomerulosclerosis’ field which will change to ‘percent globally sclerotic glomeruli’ after implementation. This label change will be present on the donor record and also include all instances of the field elsewhere in UNet:
- Waitlist acceptance criteria
- Offer Filters
- TIEDI DDR
- DonorNet match run initiation page
- DonorNet Donor Snapshot
These changes are part of several other data collection changes that will release on Sept. 14, 2023.
Education and resources
An educational course is now available in UNOS Connect, the OPTN’s learning management system.
The course number and title are:
- SYS192: Kidney Biopsy Reporting and Data Collection
Online help documentation covering UNet functionality will be available when the system updates go into effect.
